Cargo Man

Or is Alaska Airlines operating the Q400 in ANC?

TallFlyer

Horizon is opening an ANC domicile next year. FAI and ADQ to start, and they've been working on the appropriate RNP authorization to serve Southeast.

UCLAbruins

I gotta a feeling Horizon will be runing the show in Alaska here in a couple of years....

I'm actually surprised Horizon isn't doing that already..... bring people from all over Alaska into ANC, then have main-line take'em to the States

TallFlyer

Well, you've already got operations like PenAir and ERA doing a lot of flying to the bush out of ANC. AS is, at the moment, serving the larger destinations like BET, OTZ, OME, etc, and I wonder how many of those runs are still Combis.

But yeah, I think you're right. I'd be a little worried if I were PenAir or ERA.

Can a Q400 operate economically out of a 4,000 runway? If so, DUT may be in their future.

r1830

I used to fly for Era and now fly Q400s for Republic. A 71 seat aircraft will work great for Fairbanks. Not so much for Kenai, Homer, Valdez, Cordova etc. It might work for Bethel, Deadhorse and Barrow at certain times of the year. It is in Approach Category C which will limit its abilities into special use airports. With Rotation speeds north of 120 kts I wouldnt want to take it on gravel. Not sure if it even has a gravel supplement available. You cant get this airplane slow on landing, you will tail strike. Having flown both the 100 and the 400, the 400 is a different animal. The 100 is an oversize Twin Otter. The 400 is more like a jet.

There has long been rumors that Era might go the 400 route as the have been operating Dash 8 100 for years. The biggest issue is it would require a large and expensive change to their security program. Also a whole different set of parts for the Q400. When Era sold the Twin Otters and bought BE1900Ds, over half the airports in the state of Alaska had runways to short for the BE1900D. The 37 seat Dash 8 100 has better performance numbers than a 19 seat Beech 1900. The q400 is incapable of serving a lot of runways in the state and would be a huge expense for Era. it has a very limited maket in the state. I dont think it will happen, but i have been gone for more than 4 years. the aviation industry is a hard industry to predict...

TallFlyer

I agree that it's probably a large aircraft for PWS and the Kenai, but anywhere they're running a 737 I'd see as a prime fit for the Q. That said, a lot of those 737 destinations are getting a Combi, but there have been rumors that the -400s at AS are going away eventually. More work for Everts and NAC, but I'm sure they won't mind.

But like you I've been gone a while. Things change. Etc. If they can figure out how to get the Q in and out of Dutch though I could see PenAir loosing it. Plenty of times they've got 4 Saabs lined up on the ANC ramp ready to go at o'dark thirty in the middle of winter to head down the Peninsula, and all of those airplanes stopping at AKN and CDB for fuel so they can actually carry something.

JamesNoBrakes

I thought the 1900 easily outperformed the -8?

Moonwolf

Is this sarcasm? Have you seen how many extra fins the 1900 has?

JamesNoBrakes

Absolutely, and I've seen how the -8 struggles to altitude.

What does number of fins have to do with anything?

TallFlyer

While I've got no first hand experience in either bird I can tell you that in Alaska the only metric that's really important is how "how much runway does it need?"

A close second is "how fast can I get to 5,000 feet?"