competition for customers will be on the ground and not in the air. This was in relation to saving passenger checkin time using web checkin, RFID tags on bags etc.
There's going to have to big improve in that area. Staff travelled it the other day and used the self checkin kiosk which had the label printer attached. All checked in, boarding passes in hand, luggage labels attached and then proceeded to wait 30mins in queue to drop off checked in bags. 1 Bag drop operator with 40-odd people in the queue, had to attract attention of another staff member as our flight was called twice for boarding and then finally name paged and queue had barely moved. Apparantly lots of people in wrong queues because it's not the well laid out. We ran to get on flight but were last to board and approx. 6 commercial's pax got bumped due to not enough time to process bags.
this thing has an extra 200kg and only the same CLB and CRZ power. Not ideal at all.
The new engines are the PW127 M as opposed to the F, haven't seen the stats but I would assume there's extra grunt in there to cover the increase MAUW. The 68Y config will be the killer there. As stated earlier there needs to be a move towards 90 seats the spread the fleets from 50 -to 136.
Hope ATR puts an APU into the 72-600, prop brake is a poor substitute.
Why? the prop brake seems to work well. It's only real limitation is not operating it when refuelling and loading the rear hold. As most refuels take place pretty quick on turn arounds you can have the No. 2 fired up before boarding the next load. Why have a 3rd turbine engine to maintain?
Realsitically it will be the Q400 IMO, but I'd love to see the ATr 72-600 get a go.
Depends on what/who you want to believe, but quite a few in the company are saying the Q400 is a done deal, all signed up etc
Did anyone notice the full page ads in the NZ main newspapers from Bombardier congratulating QantasLink for their 12 x Q400 order to compete with
VB Embraer's. Think it all adds up to Air NZ taking the same tack, competing the gas guzzelling jets with similar performance, fuel efficient turboprops.
My pick - Q400 to initially introduce type with the 400X to be the final model
S2K