Originally Posted by
Saintly
Its a wonder why Qantas didn't go down the F50 route. Instead they went down the Dash 8 path, which is fine too.
Probably something to do with the history, in that that part of 'Qantas' wasn't Qantas at that point in time, it was TAA/Australian and I believe the subsidiaries that made up link/regional ops were originally fairly independent. I don't think the Dash-8s came along until Qantas took over TN and all of those brands were brought under the same livery (if not AOC), with their original names for a while and finally trading as QantasLink. Didn't AN order their F50s in the late 80s/early 90s?? The 'merger' didn't happen until the early 90s. In fact, about 10-11 days ago was the 30th Anniversary of the handing over of the $400M cheque by QF to the Commonwealth for TN.
That's my understanding anyway, that the Dash 8s came after that, didn't the regionals have a bunch of airframes such as the Jetstream, Shorts and the like??
In any case, always sad to see a long serving and well-liked aeroplane finish its run.