That’s interesting. When they built the short field infrastructure the idea was to connect all of Norway. Small city to small city just as much, or more, than creating a hub kind of thing. The other reason was to go from sea based airports to much safer and much more efficient land based airports.
Today though, bridges and tunnels have made the roads much faster and more efficient. Many of the small airports are disbanded, replaced by fewer and larger airports, capable of taking medium sized jets. Lofoten will get one airport soon. Between Trondheim and Bodø, at least 3 smaller airport will vanish, replaced by one larger. There will still be lots of smaller airports left, and the future “plan” (or wild, unrealistic idea 
) is to use electric aircraft on these airports, and then use relatively small aircraft. Time will tell. IMO commercial traffic with small aircraft seems to become increasingly less economical and less practical each year due to security and safety “concern”. On the other hand, at some point the aging fleet of dash 8 (100-300 series) has to be replaced by something.
You’re right, didn’t phrase that well, Wideroe is flying PSO routes. Here is an interesting thesis
http://othes.univie.ac.at/42439/1/2016-05-12_0803607.pdf
or monopolies (Wideroe, Dash 8, Norway) the airlines are getting rid of turboprops, and they wouldn’t do it if it made sense to operate them.
Widerøe started using E190 E2 a year ago. They are not a monopoly. Several others have started competing, but none has made it. It’s only a year ago that FlyViking went bust when trying to fly the same routes.
As I understand the E190 takes over some of the routes flown by the Q400 + additional international routes. It’s the 100 – 300 series of dash 8 that is the bread and butter however, and I don’t see any jet taking over those routes (or other TP for that matter).
Arne wrote:
BAe146
No wonder… the 146 is one of the worst examples (fuel, maintenance). A little joke:
Captain: Hey, go ahed and start the APU will you.
First Officer: Which one?
In Sweden BRA is dropping its jets (BAe146) for a full TP fleet (ATRs and Fokker 50).
AdamFrisch wrote:
And an unducted fanjet is, well, a turboprop.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
In the eyes of the wide public, turboprops are on one level with a JU52 and quite a few have heard one of those has crashed… but seriously, a lot of passengers do not like propellers, they feel unsafe on prop airplanes and will, given the choice, fly with an airline which uses jets (unless it’s cheaper…..)
I’ve heard that many times and think that’s a myth and not a factor for airline management decisions. Most passengers have no idea in what plane they will fly or have flown. They book depending on price and time. If an airline wanted to use props and had a business case for them they would not care about the one dumb one out of a thousand passengers.
The small minority that is educated about airplane types knows that not booking a flight because it’s on a TP in the western world is ridiculous.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
why is the sky blue
I know why!
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I’ve never understood why Elefants (and most women) are freaked out by mice either
The high/low thing is something I discussed with pax who flew PA28 and C172, their view is that PA28 looks like a proper airplane, why? because it looks like an airliner, but some TP airliners are high wing? yes but I like sitting on it rather than getting hanged by a wing
The other aspects are probably engine confinement that feel safe or fear closed/open space?
Take someone who is both claustrophobic and has vertigo, good luck finding him a nice elevator, especially if he is not fit to climb stairs
I had pax in open/closed cockpit, gliders/power, low/high wing…there is no clear cut but majority of nervous ones tend to like {flying low, closed cockpit, engine noise and low wing}
Airborne_Again wrote:
I’ve never understood the rationale behind the dislike.
I’ve never understood why Elefants (and most women) are freaked out by mice either. It’s simply like that… why is the sky blue…
