Update – DHC 8

In civil transportation, if the seventies were the days of the corporate turboprop, then the eighties certainly will be noted for the emergence of a whole new breed of mini-airliner. New turboprop-powered aircraft will certainly turn the wheel full circle as true DC-3 replacements and provide air transportation to small communities just as that faithful Douglas product did nearly half a century ago.

“Update” this issue examines the De Havilland Canada Dash 8 which, along with Embraer’s Brasilia and Saab-Fairchild’s 340 will usher in a new era of cost-efficient transports where traditional F-27 and BAe 748s were too large and the 12 or 16 seat commuters too small to adequately serve the route. From Sydney alone, this class of airliner, which must also include Short Brothers 330 and 360, could augment current F-27 services to such centres at Bathurst, Taree, Orange, Port Macquarie and even Canberra at certain times. After all, it is better to operate a sector with 20 passengers in a 30 seater rather than a 50 seater and in many instances that is exactly what happens which, through the period of a trading year, greatly erodes the overall load factor of an intrastate carrier. This scenario is already being played out in Queensland where TAA particularly has foregone F-27 routes to the smaller Metros of BPA.

But back to the Dash 8.

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