A plane for the mission field

Quest began with a cause. In 1998 Tom Hamilton and David Voetmann founded the Idaho Air Group, convinced that humanitarian and missionary pilots flying from rough jungle and mountain strips needed an aircraft designed for them. Quest Aircraft launched in 2001 in Sandpoint, Idaho, with a staff of 14, and its designer Evan Mortenson’s turboprop, the Kodiak, first flew on 16 October 2004.

Every eleventh aircraft

The Kodiak is a rugged single-engined STOL utility aircraft, certified by the FAA on 31 May 2007 and first delivered in January 2008; the mission aviation group JAARS took one in early 2009. Under its Quest Mission Team programme the company aimed to sell one in every eleven Kodiaks to a mission organisation at cost price. Floats, icing clearance and European certification followed, and by 2021, 300 had been delivered.

From Idaho to Daher

Business was bumpier. The workforce reached 340 in 2009, then fell to 155 in 2010 before new capital arrived. In February 2015 Quest’s Japanese dealer, Setouchi Holdings of the Tsuneishi Group, bought the company, and in 2019 Setouchi sold it to France’s Daher, maker of the TBM. The deal closed by 1 October 2019; Quest was renamed Kodiak Aircraft and absorbed into Daher, which continues to build the type.

工場

• Sandpoint works · Sandpoint, Idaho — 27,000 sq ft in 2002, expanded to 110,000 sq ft in 2016

人々

• Tom Hamilton · co-founder
• David Voetmann · co-founder
• Evan Mortenson · designer of the Kodiak
• Paul Schaller · CEO from 2004
• Sam Hill · CEO 2012–2017