CQ Plane Spotting Historic Spot - QantasLink Dash-8-200s VH-SDA & VH-SDE Now Flying for Air Greenland as OY-GRO & OY-GRP

In 2014 two of my personal favourite QantasLink aircraft - Dash-8-200s VH-SDA and VH-SDE - which operated for many years on Sunstate Airlines routes from Brisbane to regional Queensland - were sold overseas and removed from the Australian aircraft register.

VH-SDA (c/n 482) was built in 1997 and was delivered to Australia in April 1998, while VH-SDE (c/n 453) was built in 1996 and after operating in Brazil, it was eventually delivered to Australia as N453DS in October 2001.

VH-SDA had its last revenue service on Tuesday 13 May 2014, while VH-SDE had its last revenue service on Friday 9 May 2014.  Both Dash-8-200s were then re-registered as C-FEBU and C-FEAQ respectively in early June 2014 and sat idle at Sydney Airport with all red tails and their titles removed.  They finally departed Australia in early July 2014 for Pago Pago on their long journey to Canada.

In 2015, both Dash-8-200s had found new homes and were being operated by Air Greenland as OY-GRO (ex VH-SDA) and OY-GRP (ex VH-SDE).

OY-GRO (ex VH-SDA)  (Beggi_North / https://www.flickr.com/)

OY-GRP (ex VH-SDE)  (http://dash8spotter.blogspot.com/)

It is really great to see a couple of my favourite aircraft - that I often was a passenger on flying between Emerald and Brisbane - still flying around and not consigned to the scrap heap!

I found some of the great information in this Historic Spot at the Dash 8 Spotter Blog (http://dash8spotter.blogspot.com/) which has now been incorporated into the Regional Turboprop Spotter Blog (http://www.regionalturbopropspotter.blogspot.com/).