I was asked to visit the Australian Research Council in Canberra as part of my role as CAIRSS Technical Officer. The trip commenced on Sunday afternoon and was quite urgent. As far as the business end of the trip, working with efficient and professional organisations always goes well. The reason for this blog is to talk about the travel.
Battling with traffic myself or being driven to the Brisbane airport would have both taken a considerable amount of time. With a busy week behind me and some family commitments including a kids birthday party on the Sunday morning, I opted to fly to Brisbane aboard Skytrans.
The flight from Toowoomba to Brisbane took approximately 20 minutes. I looked out the window shortly after take off and realised that we already passing Gatton. At this point we were offered a mint. No sooner had I swallowed the mint when the Captain announced our decent.
The De Havilland Canada Dash 8 – 100 also known as the Bombardier Dash 8 is more commonly referred to in recent years as the Q100 Series Turboprop (The Q stands for quiet). I realised after talking to the Skytrans staff that this Q100 (approx. 37 passengers) is from the same family as the Q400 (approx. 75 passengers) that is used by Qantas for regional flights, including my last trip from Brisbane to Canberra in the off season when the number of passengers on that Sunday were quite small. The Q400 is powered by 2 engines that produce over 4, 500 horse power each. The engines powering the Q100 are a little smaller, producing approximately 2000 horse power each, allowing a cruise speed of a little over 400km/h.
