Air Greenland's Record-Breaking Turboprop Flight

I find the Dash-8 tolerable for flights of 1 hour max. Now imagine 8 very noisy hours...

Off topic, but I figure Garuda Indonesia flying to South America was something we also previously didn't expect to see. But hey, Corona came, and now flight GA8800 took place yesterday, BKK-KNO-AMS-GRU...

Just want to say, that your blog is still very interesting during these no fly times. Keep up the good work!

Great post. I find these types of posts fascinating during a time like this.

@ Lucky:

"...though I have to say that an eight hour turboprop flight isn’t one that tempts me very much."

So I guess you would not have enjoyed, in 1997, the Swissair commemorative DC4 flight from JFK to Geneva via Gander and Shannon. 19 hours in an unpressurized and rather noisy piston-engined plane. Add some weather between YQX and SNN and you see the picture. The turbulence at 8,000 ft, by the way, has nothing to do with the one at 32,000 and one understands why those barf bags were needed. To be honest, the flight was not continuous, with two nights spent in Gander and Shannon.

Although repainted in Swissair old colors, the plane was not Swiss but South African, with a ZU registration. Not very comfortable and vile food (they really could have made an effort, especially considering that the price was steep) but it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Most of us frequent flyers are also geography buffs. One fact worth mentioning is that this 8 hour trans-Atlantic flight from Nuuk to Copenhagen is actually considered a domestic flight within the Kingdom of Denmark since Greenland is part of Denmark.

Air Greenland and all aircraft in Greenland are registered according to ICAO under the Kingdom of Denmark (OY).

Yes, definitely bring your Noise Cancelling headset of choice. The Dash 8-200 Series wasn't part of the Q Series that had in-cabin built-in active noise cancellation. As far as I know, that was limited to the later model Dash 8-400 Series.

Nope!! I stand corrected, there were Dash 8-Q200's and Q300's made from 2nd Qtr 1996 onward. So if this is a 23 year old aircraft, it MIGHT be a Q model.

Bunch of wusses.

Transpacific and transatlantic flights were done with piston andeturbop aircraft for 30 years before the 707 etc changed life.

DC6, DC7, Bristol Brittania, Convair, Vickers Vanguard to name a few

My perhaps faulty memory recalls the Dash 8 to be much quieter than the old girls. Possibly a bit bumpier.

@ Azamaraal:

Vickers Vanguard ????

I don't think so...Maybe Trans Canada Airlines, but I doubt it.

@Pierre

You are right - Vanguard was TCA regional. They were flying Constellations and North Stars TATL.

Definitely flew TCA Viscounts and Vanguards twixt St. Johns and Toronto into the 70's. Viscount was a regional and I thought the Vanguard was long range but just discovered it was also medium range and just a bigger variant. The Britannia was definitely trans Pacific (Canadian Pacific Airlines).

If the runway is only 3100 feet, how did the a330 that used to fly there operate? I might have misread what was flying there before

@ Michael -- The A330 flies out of Kangerlussuaq rather than Nuuk, as the former has a much longer runway.

Is (was?) AF’s (or Tahiti Nui’s, I can’t remember which) flight Paris to Papeete (w/a stop at LAX) treated as “domestic”?

I have been on a Longyearbyen to Oslo n/s, and it was treated as domestic. I think the flight was 6 hours, more or less.

@ Al,

It can't be treated as "domestic" because of the stop in LAX (not only because of US insisting on transit pax needing to enter and leave US, but because of passengers mix onboard, some going to LAX). Stop in LAX is changing, though see Ben's article recently.

Besides, France has always had a "mixed" arrangement regarding all flights from "DOM/TOM" (French overseas communities), with passengers arriving in France needing to go through customs (not Immigration) due to different taxation regimes in some overseas areas, nothing heavy handed but existing.

1960 long flight with engines going in and out of syncronasation on a TEAL - later Air NZ Super Connie from Nandi to Auckland . Just as you were ready to drift off all 4 would sync and really shake it up.
168 got lucky and crossed the Indian Ocean in a QUANTAS Electra from Perth to Cocus Keeling then to Maritius.1st hop was 8 and 2nd was 10 as I remember. Long slog but no piston sync problems. I was a teenager and Mom raised the arm rests and lay across the seats while I stretched out on the floor. We we're lucky because Sud Afrikanse operated the route with DC7's which toook looonger and 4 big radials needing to be synced. Friends of took DC7 a year later and I watched the takeoff. Boy was that slooow they used pretty much the whole runway and it was the slowest climb out I have ever saw.

Naive question but might turboprops make something of a comeback with the need for planes that can do longer routes with fewer passengers and still make a profit? I know the A321xxx is moving into that territory but would costs be low enough?

I can see people going for a (much?) longer flight if the price were low enough and seats comfortable/roomy enough. I have a somewhat silly vision in my head of an updated Dash-7 (to satisfy ETOPS) doing this. For a jet version, maybe a BAE-146 with updated, more efficient engines, larger fuel tanks and possibly reduced pax capacity.

Just crazy ideas that've run through my head after reading articles predicting the number of de facto long, thin routes skyrocketting as a result of Covid.

I read about that flight. I wonder how many air buffs went into it thinking how interesting it would be, before realising how loud, bumpy and miserable it would turn out to be!