The Saab 340 is a Swedish regional aircraft, which first flew on 25 January 1983. Designed to seat between 30 and 36 passengers, it proved very popular around the world, becoming the best selling regional aircraft of its time.
Powered by a pair of General Electric CT7-9B turboprop engines, it has a range of 1,350km or 840 miles in the 340B configuration. With comfortable three abreast seating, passengers were well set with plenty of space. Crossair of Switzerland started services first in June 1984.
Saab 340 Video
Following on from the last video about the Mitsubishi MC-20, this time we head to Sweden for a look at the Saab 340. Well, not to the Nordic country exactly, as this video was produced by Air Panama. It runs for a shade under two minutes and shows you all around the new plane.
While I can’t understand the video, it’s fun to hear them mentioning all the airlines that operate the plane. I guess this was to reassure the travelling public that this was operated by the big carriers!
A Saab Cockpit
There are two pilots who fly the plane (perhaps not too surprisingly) and I came across this image and had to share it. This was taken in Sweden in 2009.
Overall Thoughts
The Saab 340 was produced all the way through to June 1999, with a total of 459 examples being built. The youngest aircraft is 25 years old at the time of writing, so they aren’t very commonly found these days.
There are many flying with REX in Australia (Regional Express Airlines) as they are perfect for that airline’s route structure. That is perhaps the easiest place to get on board one these days.
Have you flown on the Saab 340 before? What is it like? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Bidgee via Wikimedia Commons.
Cockpit via Ostersund Photography via Wikimedia Commons.
Yes, flew many times on these in and out of MSP when they were in Northwest’s fleet — usually to LSE, ALO, SBN. This includes a few times when I was the only pax, and the FA had me move to the back row with her “for weight and balance”. Crazy!
Yes, those small planes are a bit touchy when it comes to weight and balance. Nice you’ve got to fly on it several times! Thanks for the comment.
I flew the 340 many times between BOS and PHL on Business Express, as well as on Northwest (Mesaba) out of MEM and DTW. They were loud, very few passenger “luxuries” other than a restroom and a coffee maker, but they were definitely reliable. If I was ever given the choice of the 340 or the Bombardier CRJ100/200, Saab would have one 100% of the time
It’s funny how people really don’t like the CRJs. Cool to hear what it was like on board – those older planes were definitely a lot noisier than what we’re used to today. Thanks for the comment!