The 2 CRJ200 were originally bought by West Air Sweden when they took over the contract to fly the mail in Norway in October 06. It was intended to fly a daily mail route from mainland Norway to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Artic Ocean.
The mail had previously been flown by pax configured 737s by Scandinavian Airlines. The result of this was basically the mail running 4-6 weeks behind because SAS offloaded mail in order to get their pax on the plane. Usually this was due to being weight limited on short runways in northern Norway.
The route from Tromsø to Longyearbyen (78°13′N 15°33′E) is 517NM. The route is over open water and Svalbard only has one usable airport with no alternatives other than to go back to Tromsø as most other runways in northern Norway are only around 3000ft long.
Up until recently WAS fleet has consisted of BAe ATPs and HS748s none of which will fly the distance with the required payload in excess of 17000lbs and being able to return to the alternate.
But now it looks like the CRJ200PF will actually be to small for this mission as the volume isn’t great enough. Today the route is flown by our Bae 146-200QT. (SE-DRN)(with the large freight door))
The CRJs should be online mid April based at OSL, so we will see what work management can come up with for them. Anyways it will be cool to see if these machines can generate any money. West Air Sweden is also one of northern europes largest FedEx feeders, so Im sure they will keep em flying.
thats too bad, west air is one of the last operators of HS748's with the downfall of Emerald
on a side note, we only have one more 748 on line, and it will be gone by summer. Alaire in Spain looks like they are going to be operating a couple of them.
Freight Natzi has the right idea.
The Saab 340 is a great plane but not enough cargo.
IBC also flys them.
Jetstream? Too small.
EMB-120 Too small/old.
DHC-8-100/200 Too small. -300 would be great (expensive).
SAAB 2000, I would LOVE to see this one, too expensive!
F50 Would be PERFECT. Too bad the European companies won't
sell them (I sure wouldn't).
It is not relevent if the airplane is produced or not, cargo does NOT
use new planes (expecially feeders). What (suitable) turbo props
are presently ON THE MARKET.
Suitable, meaning 11,000-16,000 lbs of cargo and available parts.
CE
DC9, are a nogo over here in Europe mainly due to noise restrictions.
Saab340, bunch of em flying freight in Scandinavia, seems to work good for the operators.
Fokker50, a few companies in northern europe seem to do real good with them.
Bae ATP, we are getting close to 30 planes now and we cant really complain about em, good freightdog for what we do. 1-2hr legs 17500lbs of cargo all night long