Good morning from Terminal 1 at Toronto Pearson!
My name is Alex, and today’s flight is a bit of a new experience for me.
Being from Alberta, I don’t usually see any more of Terminal 1 other than the domestic
gates here, or the… interminable walk over to the international side.
Today though, I’m here to catch a regional flight within Ontario for once, heading north
to Timmins with Air Canada Express’ Dash 8-400.
Timmins, Ontario, is a city of just over 40,000 people located about 550 kilometres north
of Toronto.
The main industries there are mining and forestry, and the city also serves as a regional hub
for Northeastern Ontario.
This was filmed back in January of this year, and I needed to get to Timmins for a very
specific reason - to fly on the very last Classic Dash 8 flight with Air Canada Express,
from there back to Toronto.
It’s a little out of the way for me from home in Calgary, but although it was a sad
occasion as aircraft retirements often are, I’m very glad I was there!
Obviously though, I had to get to Timmins first, and short domestic flights within Ontario
leave from these ground loading gates in terminal 1, where you’ll find plenty of Dash 8s and
CRJs.
It can get a bit crowded whenever they have multiple flights though, especially if they’re
leaving within a couple minutes of each other.
Our plane isn’t exactly visible from here, but we’ll be riding on this De Havilland
Canada Dash 8-400, a fairly new 2016 build registered as Charlie Golf Juliet Zulu Alpha.
After a slight delay due to a late inbound arrival, it was time to leave the relative
comfort of terminal 1 and head outside to… well, January in Ontario.
My seat for today is pretty far in the back, in 16A.
Normally I’d go for one of the preferred seats at the front for extra legroom, but
decided to give a normal seat a try since this isn’t too long a flight.
The saving grace here, unlike some other Dash 8 seats, is that AC’s are decently padded,
especially when it comes to my knees and the seat in front.
Before we go though, I’d like to give another thank you to my channel members, for helping
to make… very out-of-the-way trips like this possible.
If you’d like to support my work here on YouTube, you can click the “join” button
down below to find out more!
Here’s our departure from Toronto, off of runway 06L!
After that awesome bank on the departure, let’s take a look around the cabin.
The seats on Air Canada Express’ Dash 8-400s are all fairly standard, and have this tray
table which sits just a bit low.
In the seatback pocket, which is decently roomy, you’ll find the usual air sickness
bag and the safety card.
During boarding, the crew also handed out the usual CleanCare package, which came with
an additional mask, wipes, and hand sanitizer.
Interestingly, these seats all have a coat hook on them too.
That’s a unique touch I wouldn’t have expected on a Dash 8, buuuut it makes perfect
sense on a day like today.
One thing I’ve always found odd on airliners, no matter what type, is that the window armrests
in Economy are fixed.
On a completely full flight like this one, I really wish they moved just for an extra
inch or two of space.
One very Dash 8-specific thing that I love are the logos on the buckles, although you
don’t see them as much on the newer -400s.
Air Canada Express’ Dash 8-400s seat 78 passengers in an all-Economy layout.
Unlike the earlier Classic Dashes, the -400s have two larger exit doors at the very back
of the plane, and so these don’t have any exit rows halfway down like the smaller ones
did.
I was always a fan of those rows on AC’s -100s and -300s since they had about 3 to
4 more inches of legroom.
Flying from Toronto to Timmins takes just over an hour, which meant there was enough
time for a short snack and drink service.
I had a bottle of water and some Air Canada pretzels.
For the rest of the flight, the views below were pretty spectacular, with some beautiful
views of freshly snow-covered forest, as well as the city of Sudbury and Sudbury Airport.
Now, while I was in Timmins, naturally I had to do some plane spotting, and wanting to
fly on the final Classic Dash flight as well, my good friend Mark also came along.
We actually spent two nights there, and wanted to come here a bit earlier in order to hopefully
catch Air Creebec’s Hawker-Siddeley HS748 flying.
The HS748 is a pretty rare British type that you can only find in rural Ontario these days,
and while planning this trip, we found that Air Creebec just so happened to have one based
in Timmins.
Unfortunately, we kinda rolled the dice and lost since it didn’t end up flying at all
while we were.
We did manage to see and very much hear it doing an engine run though, and so seeing
that along with some uniquely rural Ontario traffic made for a pretty nice trip, at least
for us.
I could’ve done without the -30° temperatures, but that’s what I get for going to Northern
Ontario in January!
I imagine normal people would’ve gone, I dunno, somewhere warm, maybe, but where’s
the fun in that?
Eventually, we were on the descent into Timmins, and here’s our arrival into a snowy runway
03.
So that was Air Canada Express on an intra-Ontario flight.
Overall it was a decent experience, the snacks and drinks were appreciated, and it turned
out we made up some time in the air for an on-time arrival.
Obviously, the seats are nothing to write home about, and may be a little bit older
by other carriers’ standards, but the extra padding was very welcome.
So yeah, a pretty standard travel experience as far as Canadian regional flights go.
Flying out of a ramp loading gate in Toronto was kinda cool though, and really highlights
why dressing warm is important when flying in Canadian winters.
It was also kind of neat sitting in the back of a Q400 for once, and if a flight is empty
and, maybe more importantly, short enough, I’d sit here again.
Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you next time.