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Aviation History
1983
1983 - 0651.PDF
Dash 8: Canada's new commuter "XTTThen the Dash 8 enters service," y y says John Sandford, de Havilland's dynamic president, "the demand for commuters in its class will be approaching its peak. The market will be hotly contested, but we're in good shape already, with strong interest from 45 per cent of perceived US customers." The Dash 8 vies with four other new competitors to capture a slice of the action. The recently rolled-out SF.340, the CN.235, ATR.42, Brasilia, and the Shorts SD.360, which is already in service, offer between them a range of 30-46 seats. The market is for up to 2,000 aircraft, a large proportion of which will be doing duty in the Americas. Conceived from the start as a commuter, the Dash 8 is designed primar ily as an aircraft capable of delivering 36 passengers to a major airport with enough luggage for international travel. Four- abreast seating and a plush, modern interior give it airliner style "which passengers will like" says Sandford. De Havilland Canada (DHC) has kept one foot firmly in the Stol camp, however. Dash 8's distinctive T-tail gives away both its Dash 7 ancestry and its other market slot—as a military transport and general purpose utility aircraft. DHC's new commuter is therefore aimed at a wide variety of customers, half of which are expected to materialise in the USA. Most US sales will be for the commuter role. But the aircraft is also being promoted strongly in the Third World, particularly This year sees the rollout of four new 30-46-seat commuters, with another to follow in 1984. De Havilland's Dash 8, described here by Julian Moxon, fits neatly between the company's well established Dash 7 and Twin Otter. in Africa, where its salesmen say that it has already been well received. The Dash 8 is also offered in a longer range corporate guise. Sales are being handled by Innotech Aviation. Although not sold as a Stol aircraft in the Dash 7 category, the Dash 8 is promoted as having "superior" runway performance, in particular on hot and high The first PW120 was mated to the Dash 8 on March 7. Rollout of the aircraft is set for April 19 FLIGHT International, 9 April 1983 airfields. Two 1,800 s.h.p. Pratt & Whit ney PW120s, and powerful single slotted flaps confer a 2,900ft take-off requirement at IAS +15°C, with landing performance to match. So the Dash 8 will appeal to up-country operators as well as to those feeding passengers into congested hub airports via stub runways—a technique pioneered, says DHC, by US operators of the Dash 7. The birth of the new aircraft has followed a reasonably logical path. The Dash 7. and DHC's small workhorse, the Twin Otter, are still on the production line, the 800th Otter having only recently been rolled out. In thinking about the right size lor what, at the time, was known as the Dash X, DHC realised that it had an important gap to fill between the unpressunsed 19-seat Otter and the pres surised, 50-seat Dash 7. It wanted to cater for operators for whom the jump from one type to the other was too big. Preliminary details of the 30-40 seat Dash X were released informally at the June 1979 Paris Air Show. Later that year, a market survey of potential customers, most of which were in the USA and Canada, showed that the demand would be for a 36-seater, passengers wanting to be carried in "trunkline comfort." In early 1980 de Havilland invited participation in the project by other Cana dian aerospace companies, and in Febru ary it announced that Pratt & Whitney (Canada) would supply its new PW120 turboprop, then called the PT7A. An order for 200 engines was signed, and the Dash 7 X became officially known as the Dash 8. 1005
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