Small airline, small airports, small aircraft: A formula for succes! And of all the great little aircraft the De Havilland DHC-8, aka Dash 8, is my absolute favourite.

It is sturdy and powerful and by the same time elegant and sleek.

So you bet we enjoyed our ride to Calvi, Corsica (France) on Avantiair’s Dash 8 this summer.

This little known German airline based at Paderborn-Airport offers ad hoc and holiday charters as well as ACMI (wet-lease) services.

For our flight it was chartered by Austian tour operator Rhomberg Reisen for trips from Memmingen, Germany to Calvi in the north-west of the French island of Corsica. It also operates weekly flights there from Graz and Innsbruck in the summer season 2023. I traveled with them a few times over the years and they booked me on some really special airlines such before such as DLT, Tyrolean Airways, and People’s. (No the latter is not based in North Korea but in Switzerland.)

The crew was nice and the cabin spotlesss and surprisingly quiet on both the outbound and return flight and there even was a basic service with a granola bar and hot and cold non-acoholic drinks.

The showstopper, however, were the epic views with an amazing change of scenery from being north, and within to south of the alps, crossing the Italian peninsula and finally approaching our destination over the deep blue mediterrean sea. We should to this again sometime soon!