Originally Posted by
Saintly
Just had a thought......Dehavilland and then Bombardiar made the 72-seat Dash 8-Q400, and this aircraft had higher cruising speed (up to 360 knots) then the 50-seat Dash 8-300 aircraft. If Fokker was still around these days...do any of you think that they could of made an aircraft that was an upgrade from the F50 such as a 70 odd seat turboprop with higher cruise speed such as the Q400?
And going on from my question above...do you think in ten to 15 years time we will see a civilian turboprop aircraft made that genuinely approaches jet speeds such as 400 knots for example?
So far we have the Q400 which gets to 360 knots...but no other passenger turboprop cruises quicker.
There is of course that turboprop with the props at the rear (that italian plane), which is quicker then the Q400...but I dont count that aircraft as a passenger turboprop.
Turbo props have been cracking over 400kts for decades. The P3, military version of the Electra (90 seats) would hit its Vne of 405kts (indicated not TAS) with 4 Engs turning and a bit over 360kts with three turning. The TU-95 could go faster than Mach 0.8 when we went chasing one (we were limited to 0.8 and watched him fly away), as an airliner it was called the TU-114.