Hello everyone, my name is Alex, and thank you for tuning in to this trip report.
Today, I’m at Edmonton International Airport, where I’ll be flying home to Calgary, on
Air Canada Express.
The Calgary to Edmonton route is easily the most popular regional one within the province of Alberta.
Air Canada Express, or more accurately, Jazz Aviation,
flies mostly Bombardier Q400s betweenthe two cities.
However, there’s also a flight or two operated by some older de Havilland Canada Dash 8-300s,
otherwise known as the “Classic Dash”.
This 40 minute flight will be on board one of these aircraft,
operating as Air Canada Flight 8163.
So far, it seems like it’ll be a fairly empty flight.
I’ve always enjoyed flying through Edmonton.
Alberta’s second busiest airport is easy to navigate, and they have a reasonably efficient
central security area that got me through in minutes.
Right after security is a very nice retail area,
with excellent views of the west side of the airport.
Even through glass, it’s not a bad place for some plane spotting.
Here’s my aircraft arriving from Saskatoon, Charlie Golf Victor Oscar November, a 29-year-old
Dash 8-300.
Part of me was hoping for either the one in the new Air Canada livery, or the last one
remaining in the Jazz paint, but maybe I’ll luck out and fly one of those sometime in the future.
Most Calgary-bound flights use gate 49 in Edmonton.
It’s really just a row of desks that lead to 9 ground-loading gates for Dash 8s -
one half for WestJet, and the other for Air Canada.
I will say, it’s kinda cool flying through this completely new part of Edmonton, for me at least,
even if it looks like they’re trying to teach me the alphabet in the process.
My seat for this 40 minute flight is 10A, at the rear of the aircraft.
The legroom here is this exit row is phenomenal!
Most of you watching already know that I’m quite tall, so having actual space between
my knees and the seat in front is wonderful.
There ended up being only 13 passengers on the flight, so I had the row to myself as an added bonus.
In the meantime, with this excellent view of the landing gear, here’s our departure
from Edmonton International Airport’s runway 12.
As you can probably tell, the cabin on this Classic Dash is quite a bit different than
that on the Q400.
Even the seat belts have Dash 8 logos!
After a bumpy start to the flight, here’s a look at the seatback pocket contents.
Included on this Dash 8-300 is the typical safety card,
a menu for flights a bit longer than this,
along with an air sickness bag and Air Canada’s inflight magazine.
While flipping through these terminal map pages, I’ll be honest, I had to look twice,
I thought this was an ad for Flair Airlines!
Regardless, I do like the detail that Air Canada puts into these route maps, even if
the one I’m flying right now barely shows up!
Later on, the sole cabin crew member came around with a choice of drink, and a bag of pretzels.
Not bad at all for this short flight.
One thing I noticed is that, the seatback pockets are strangely small.
Not that you really need them much on a regional airliner but something worth noting.
The Dash 8-300 seats 50 passengers in a 2-2 configuration.
One interesting thing is the pair of rear-facing seats at the front, which is shown as Row
13 on the seat map.
Appropriately named, if you’re not a fan of 48 people looking at you the entire flight!
The last row of seats, 12D and 12F also have a very nice amount of legroom!
Again, actual space in front of my knees is always a plus.
After I looked around the aircraft a bit, we started our descent into Calgary, for a
sunny evening arrival on runway 17L.
Overall, I thought this was a really fun flight!
The amount of legroom on this Dash 8-300 was remarkable!
That combined with the fact that it was a fairly empty flight meant it felt pretty spacious,
for a Dash 8.
The free drink and bag of pretzels was also a nice touch considering how short the flight was!
Unfortunately, these older Dash 8s will be leaving the fleet eventually.
Air Canada has already announced plans to completely retire the even smaller Dash 8-100s,
and the fleet of -300s is expected to shrink from 25 aircraft to 19 by the end of 2020.
That said, I do want to try and fly on one of those two aircraft in their different liveries,
so yes, I would definitely fly the Air Canada Express Dash 8-300 again sometime in the future.
So, as we make our way to the terminal, here’s where I’ll wrap things up.
Thank you very much for watching my experience on the “Classic Dash”!
Leave a thumbs up if you enjoyed this trip report, subscribe if you’re new to the channel,
and as always, I’ll see you in the next one.