I don't think the Q400 is a terrible airplane, however it does seem to be a bit less reliable than RJs or ERJs.

It has a lot of quirky "features" that probably come from the efforts to keep it a common type rating with the early Dash aircraft. The flight guidance computer is a perfect example. The display for vertical & lateral nav modes shows them in the opposite order of the actual buttons. There are numerous situations where if you don't mash the ALT SEL select button, it will not capture anything and just drive the aircraft into the ground.

The FMSs don't talk to each other without our intervention, and have many of their own gotchas, like not sequencing to the missed approach unless they are on the NAV page.

One could write a book about the many "features" of the Q400, but suffice it to say it requires constant babysitting. There is no "set and forget" with this airplane. Things that do have an AUTO setting, are more often than not operated manually as the airplane doesn't do a very good job of it.

All of these sort of gotchas have resulted in a lot of additional procedures for the Q400 as workarounds, and Horizon seems to have gone a bit overboard with this in some cases.

Don't get me wrong, the Q400 is a very capable aircraft, and I think it is probably able to provide service to many airports that wouldn't otherwise be served with RJs. I think what people are getting at though is that if one was used to flying the ERJ, and that's all they knew as an FO, the learning curve would be VERY steep going into the left seat of the Q400. It is NOT a forgiving aircraft. It's certainly not impossible to fly, but I think one would benefit GREATLY from being able to learn its quirks and how to handle them before being dropped into the left seat and suddenly being tasked with things such as hand flying a CAT III ILS. Couple that with the fact that we fly into some pretty gnarly airports, and have some quite complex proprietary RNP approaches that thread the needle into canyons on curved legs below all the terrain. It's a recipe for trouble IMHO, especially if they are paired with a very new FO.

As said before, the schedules suck too.

Reminds me of AQP last year when they dropped us into a CAT III with an out of control engine fire and bad vectoring by ATC. On mine we also got an approach warning for seemingly no reason (solution? Mash the approach button on the AFCS panel until it kicks back in lol..) Without the knowledge of the gotchas and quirks I don't see how a new captain with zero time in type is gonna pass training. It's not impossible clearly, but the failure rate is going to get attention from the feds no doubt.

The Horizon Air Q400 program is heavily over-proceduralized (new word) and it makes the 6 leg days a nightmare. Consider the E175. The Before Start checklist has what..6-8 items? The Q400 has 32, and every time one crew messes up on the line they add a new one.

I remember the first time I sat in the jumpseat on one of our RJs, years ago. It was on a SEA - PDX shuttle, and all I could think was "What are they doing? They're not doing anything! They've just pressed three or four buttons, and the airplane is flying the route itself. Wow."
Quite a contrast to the mighty Q.
The airplane is a challenge, but it's fun when you've mastered it. For something with propellers, it's stinking quick and can do some interesting things. That said, show up with you're "A" game, or it will try to eat you.

Strange how they stopped publishing new hire names on the internal training plan.

When will we hear from the judge today?

The judge is supposed to issue a ruling in the lawsuit by March 21.

Thanks for the info! I thought I had heard it was the 17th. Thanks!

The court proceedings went well from what I hear. Apparently both the company and the Union had great representation. The judge has stated he will most likely have a ruling this upcoming Tuesday. Regardless if we win or lose, it is obvious the bonus isn't working well enough anyway as our new hire numbers haven't significantly increased.

Also, first jet arrived in PDX this morning.

Pictures of the new bird?

Thanks for the detailed update!