I heard it is kind of a pig, compared to the 700? I've only flown the 700, but was told by those who had flown them all that it is in the sweet spot. The 900 is stretched too far, and therefore under-powered.

I'd be pretty slow to criticize QX's flight standards department. The company has an incredible safety record, and a big part of that is the safety culture that has resulted in trapping systemic errors via procedural revisions.
Don't get me wrong, the blue-sheet squadron can definitely be a pain in the ass (every revision comes with a subsequent revision correcting the previous revision's errors, omissions, and/or ambiguities), but the end result is an incredibly safe operation, considering it's operating arguably the most complex, poorly engineered (common type rating or death- or both!) regional airliner in the least forgiving environments. That airplane hates you, and wants you dead. It will try to get ya in many subtle ways, which is why I toed a pretty hard line on flying fatigued at QX.

There are a helluva lot of procedures, but then, the crews do a helluva lot with the airplane: RNP, CATIII, extensive mountain flying, etc. That's just going to necessitate a lot of procedures.
I've never worked for another company so bloated with middle management fluff and bull**** (Ready, Safe, Go!), but the flight ops department, as a whole, is top-notch.

Catch a brother up, though...who got chopped recently??? Was it the right people, for once?

Yeah the 700 is the Canadian Space Shuttle. The 900 is kind of a truck. The 200 is a sport car...sport cars don't climb.

This is what got me off my ass to get out of QX after 15yrs. When they erased our brand and turned us into a CPA carrier (which we formerly weren't), it said to me, "We are preparing to whipsaw you against non-union coattail riders!"
Kinda bummed I was right, but there is no respect for the worker in most of this business, anymore. We are a necessary evil when an airline becomes a spreadsheet with wings.

Have all the Dash 8 Q400 operators had as much trouble with training new hires and captain upgrades as Horizon....Training a HUD adds a couple of hours and RNP adds a couple hours but aside from that it seems you guys do the same as everyone else.....will be telling if and when Horizon tries go get a new fleet up and running....

Well, there's only one other Q400 operator in the US, and they're parking that fleet, and the previous owner of those airplanes crashed one. So it's tough to make a good comparison.

was not really thinking just the U S....lots of them out there in the world..We used to pride ourselves at Alaska Airlines on having the longest, most expensive, most difficult to pass 737 training programs in the world....on what is likely the easiest, least technologicaly advanced jet in the world....Then one day the money guys noticed and it was over

Does Horizon have its own sims, or you guys use Flight Safety?

We do all the sim training at Flight Safety in Seattle, although we have sent people to their Q400 sims in Toronto on (very rare) occasions when the SEA sims have been too full.

You can always compare their safety record with Skywest and Alaska!

QX has always had excellent training. Failures increasing are an obvious result of average TT/experience going down.