Aviation Appreciation Station v2

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by btimbit

Not even sure I'd call that good news personally, as much as I love the Q, those little Saab's are awesome

I've only had one ride, years ago MSP-BIS. In winter, in the snow/wind. Fun times.

[D as in David]

I've read on another forum that they're often grounded for repairs resulting in cancelled flights.

[Acey]

They are an absolute operational disaster and the only reason WestJet allowed it to continue this long is because Encore is desperately short of pilots.

Originally Posted by Lubicon

Does that come at the expense of frequency though?

Lethbridge goes from a peak of 3 Saab flights down to just a single Encore flight. So... yes.

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by Acey

They are an absolute operational disaster and the only reason WestJet allowed it to continue this long is because Encore is desperately short of pilots.

Who would have thought paying 40% less than the competition plus telling your pilots it'll be over a decade to progress to mainline WJ, while then hiring less experienced pilots above you, would lead to a shortage!

Originally Posted by D as in David

I've read on another forum that they're often grounded for repairs resulting in cancelled flights.

They're old and well-used, and they show it. There's no doubt about that.

I just have a soft spot for them

[Maritime Q-Scout]

The frustrating thing about the Canadian aviation landscape is that we need 50 seat planes.

We have a large landmass, sparce population, and a need to travel for business & leisure.

The markets of 100,000-200,000 people need service but a 76+ seat aircraft is too big for frequency.

Looking at my home, we used to have 4-6 daily flights from Sydney to Halifax. Currently there are 0. One flight a day to Montreal and one to Toronto.

The Montreal flight is too late for any connection west of Ontario (4:30pm).

The Toronto flight leaves at 5am.

There's no inbetween.

What's a small city to do? There are no small commuter planes anymore.

Nothing to replaces the Saab's or Dash 8's.

[btimbit]

Really makes me wish they did a nextgen update for the Q200 or Q300, although who knows how popular they'd be. There's always the ATR-42

[btimbit]

Cool to see Condor back in Calgary

Spoiler!