These planes are surprisingly smooth rides. When I traveled in one, it was honestly one of the most comfortable flights I’d ever been on. Not what I expected from a propeller driven plane, but I was pleasantly surprised.
One of those plane was stolen and crash on August 10, 2018. I love Q400s, especially I love those rumbling sounds of mighty PW150A turboprop sounds on taxi!
Watching this reminds me of the numerous trips to took from Fairbanks to Deadhorse on the Q400. Alaska 2817 was the flight. They just pulled out of Alaska a couple weeks ago.
I'm a big fan of turboprop airliners! It makes me very sad that most regional airlines are phasing them out, and switching to pure jet aircraft. I wish that the mainliners like the Boeing 737 and Airbus A-320 were turboprop instead of pure jet. Some say that driving a vehicle with a manual transmission, "Stickshift", is "Real Driving". I say that flying in a propeller driven airliner is "Real Flying"! I personally love the sound that the props make, the "box fan" sound in high idle and taxiing, and the "bumblebee" sound in takeoff and in flght! "Bumblebee Sound" is my name for the bass hum and vibration, heard inside the cabin of a turboprop airliner. It's true, most turboprop airliners are a quite noisy, but the quietest turboprop I ever flew on was the ATR-42, back in 1992 with American Eagle. My girlfriend has given the ATR the nickname, "The Whisperprop".
The Q400 is a nice plane, BUT, it kind of sucks for super tall people. If my friend who is an Amazonian girl and I fly anywhere on one, we HAVE to sit in the first row because otherwise she is REALLY uncomfortable. I have flown these numerous times in between Seattle and Vancouver, Kelowna, Calgary, Boise, Jackson and Bozeman on ski trips.
