When I visit my family in Australia I see lots of turboprops, but not ATRs. Qantas and its affiliated carriers seem to prefer Dash-8s. Australia has lots of remote but not very large towns that need air services, so they fly a lot of them.

I often have joked that I like riding in a prop plane, especially some ancient machine with round reciprocating engines, because all that racket being emitted discourages my seatmate from attempting to engage me in inane chatter about their grand kids and how topsy-turvy their life has been following their fifth marriage.  🙂

Lest you think I am some sort of anti-social dinosaur, I’m okay with a little bit of conversation while zooming through the sky.  However, it always seems my luck is to be seated next to someone who just cannot shut up.  🙁  I prefer that most of my flying time be consumed with deep thought about projects on which I am working, so some metaphoric silence is indeed golden.

So I will take that ATR over a regional jet any time!  I like that sonic symphony of whistling turbines and prop buzz, especially the effects heard when prop pitch is changed at the start of the takeoff roll or immediately after touch down.

That said, I took my first airplane ride (in 1955 on a DC-6) when there was no turbine whine, instead the prop buzz being accompanied by the snarl of a quartet of Double Wasp radials at full throttle.  The sound of those magnificent engines (“Place your trust in God and Pratt & Whitney”, said many a 1950’s-era pilot) spinning 13-foot diameter propellers is the aero equivalent of the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth.