The Twin Otter is a twin-engine turboprop research aircraft developed by de Havilland Canada. The Center for Interdisciplinary Remotely Piloted Aircraft Studies (CIRPAS) owned and operated the Twin Otter aircraft to support atmospheric and oceanographic research. It has a typical endurance of 4 to 6 hours, a maximum range of about 600 nautical miles, and a maximum altitude of 25,000 feet. The Twin Otter can support a payload of up to 1,500 to 3,600 lbs depending on the specific aircraft.

The airplane is instrumented to measure the meteorological state variables, flight path and platform attitude, turbulence, aerosol particle concentration and size spectra, cloud and precipitation drop concentration and size spectra, light scatter and absorption coefficients and sea surface temperature.