What the hell’s a metric mile?

1 mile = 10 km = 10 000 m

If they think they are going to be sustaining a force of 2500 men along with light armored vehicles in Chad with Herciles then they are living in cloud cuckoo land, that is the reason why Europeans find them selves renting Russian and American cargo capacity and why the likes of the UK and Australia have bought the C-17.

Oh really? It’s 600 metric miles at most to the drop zone + they’re using light AFVs and not MBTs.

And here’s Bombardier counter-statement to SAS’s statement that they would retire the dashes.

Bombardier can claim what ever statistics they want – SAS made the only possible commercial decision. They grounded their whole Q400 fleet forever.

During the first operational years SAS had an extreme amount of problems with the Q400 aircraft. This could ofcourse be related to the type being a new design – but afterall it was just a stretched version of a well proven baseline design. So you could actually consider SAS choice as a conservative choice.

The passengers were already frustrated at this time because of all the delayed and cancelled flights due to technical problems. But it got worse. After the first crash I heard about business travellers trying to avoid all flights involving Q400 aircraft. Simply because they felt uneasy about going for a flight on this particular aircraft.

After the second flight the cabin crew union stated that they were lacking confidence in the aircraft type and didn’t want to work in it.

After the third crash the pilot union in Sweden stated that SAS had a long way to go before the pilots would feel safe about flying this aircraft.

From that perspective there isn’t much more to do for SAS than to get rid of the aircraft. Surely, Bombardier and Goodrich could have a try in convincing the pilots and the cabin crew that it is a safe airplane but what good is that when the passengers won’t show up at the gate?

Regards,
Cliff

Have any other Q400 operators had similar problems?1L.

From the top of my head I know of two other incidents; one in Japan and one in Germany both operated by other airlines where there was a similar problem. But in those incidents it was the nose landing gear instead of the main landing gear that failed.

Note that SAS was the first customer of this stretched version.

Regards,
Cliff

I reckon Malmo aviation has had the same kind of problems with their Bae-146 / Avro RJ-100 jets on a flight between Malmo and Stockholm.

The pilot stated that “My first thought was – we’re going to die here – all 73 of us.”

What can you say – fubar?

Source: http://www.dagbladet.no//nyheter/2006/06/23/469717.html (in English)

Hammer: Just my two cents – but Saab 340 might be more fuel efficient and slower than Embraer 145 giving more time to loiter which indeed is important for AEWACS. Turboprops are generally better in hot and high conditions as well due to faster acceleration during take-off. (I believe that might have been important for Pakistan.)

Regards,
Cliff

Dornier failed because Embraer was backed up with money from Brazilian government?

Regards,
Cliff

But it is NATO compatible.;) And we have yet to see the this offset package bear much fruit. So the only thing this deal has going for it is price, and noone has shown any figures to back it up yet.

Speaking of offsets, on http://www.gripen.com Saab claims that 93% of the hungarian offset agreements have been achieved so far.

As for the rest of this discussion; Poland bought the solution they wanted. An american fighter.