Meeb, the DOC's of the Shorts 360 in OZ would be around $750 - $850 US/hour. A few years ago this figure would have been lower when Sunstate operated a fleet of 4 Shorts. The reason the DOC's are high on the Shorts is due to the purchase price of spares and it's very high fuel burn, which is equal to the Dash 8-100, but flying 50-60 knots slower.
bb, you are correct in saying the E120 does not compare with the Metro on the thin routes, but I think you will find the Metro III is starting to become limited on some of these thin routes ie leaving bags behind or the need to block seats. If the route doesn't support a "30 seater" then operate it has a 19 seat aircraft, block the other 11 seats. By doing this you will always get your 19 pax and their bags to their destination, you do not need a Flight Attendant plus the extra weight saved in not selling the other 11 seats could be used to carry extra fuel ie 11 pax at 84kg is an extra 924 kg of fuel, which is a tad over 2 hours fuel in an E120. Buying fuel at country ports is more expansive than city ports, plus the fuel agent at the country port may not be the one your company normally buys fuel from, which generally means the purchase price will be more expansive. ie your company has a deal with Mobil, but the country agent is BP. If you can carry round trip fuel from the city port there will be a big saving for the company, and this is something you can't do in the Metro III.
And like I said in a previous post, savings are also gained in spares ie only need to stock 1 aircraft type , Check and Training pilot numbers reduced ie generally with a small company you would have 2-3 Checkies per aircraft type, so at a guess Sunshine would have 4-6 checkies, this would reduce to 2-3 with 1 aircraft type and a big saving is gained in rostering. You only need to roster for 1 type and you only need reserve coverage for the 1 type not 2, which leads to a reduced number of pilots required.
Look at the LCC's such as Virgin Blue with only 1 aircraft type. Why did Eastern drop their Jetstreams, why did Sunstate drop the Short's and the Twin Otter's? Because it is more efficient to operrate only 1 aircraft type. I'm sure if Eastern and Sunstate were operating E120's or Saab 340's they would still be operating into many of the ports they have given up. The Dash 8, although a great aircraft is just to big for some routes, hense they have been taken over by smaller operators with smaller aircraft.