Rapid City air travelers have grown used to flying aboard small, noisy turboprop aircraft.

But a new carrier, Frontier Airlines, recently began flying a new type of plane, the Bombardier Q400. According to its manufacturer, the Q stands for quiet.

Are they better than the Canadair Regional Jets flown by other airlines serving Rapid City? It depends who you ask.

"The Q400 is an extraordinary modern turboprop that is ideal for flying into smaller markets, allowing Frontier to reach underserved markets previously unreachable with its current mainline and regional jet fleets," company officials said.

Other regional carriers, on the other hand, are sticking to their jets.

"We have no plans for the Q400," said SkyWest Airlines spokeswoman Marissa Snow.

SkyWest serves the Rapid City market flying as a Delta Connection carrier to the Delta Airlines hub in Salt Lake City and as United Express to the United Airlines hub in Denver.

In fact, St. George, Utah,-based SkyWest recently placed an order for 22 new Canadair Regional Jets with 66- and 76-passenger capacity. The CRJs are also made by Bombardier.

Frontier ordered 10 of the Bombardier Q400s for its new subsidiary, Lynx Aviation. The new Lynx aircraft will serve Lynx routes from Frontier's hub in Denver to Billings, Rapid City, Sioux City, Tulsa and Wichita.

In the range Lynx will fly the Q400, the aircraft offers a 30-percent reduction in fuel use compared with similarly sized regional jets, without sacrificing speed.

"With oil trading at more than $90 a barrel, that's huge for us," said Steve Snyder, spokesman for Frontier.

The Q400 has a 74-passenger capacity, which Frontier says is the right size for a market such as Rapid City. "We can get into these markets with enough capacity, and do it in a very fuel-efficient fashion," Snyder said.

The feature that's been getting the most attention is the Q400's noise and vibration suppression (NVS) system. In fact, Bombardier, the Q400's manufacturer, says the Q stands for Quiet.

The NVS system reduces vibration in the fuselage, stopping much of the noise you normally hear inside the cabin of a turboprop aircraft.

Most noise and vibration in a turboprop cabin is caused by pulses of air pushed by the propellers against the outside walls of the aircraft. That causes the fuselage to vibrate - making for a noisy cabin.

With an NVS system, microphones inside the cabin measure and transmit noise information to a special onboard computer. The computer also tracks propeller speed. Throughout the flight the computer operates vibration absorbers mounted on the fuselage. The absorbers produce out-of-phase counter vibrations, so the original vibrations are significantly reduced.

Some passengers have said the Lynx gates at Denver International Airport are located very close to the Frontier Airline gates. As a result, you don't have to spend a lot of time wandering around the DIA concourses looking for your next flight.

Snyder said the longest walk would be about 10 minutes.

SkyWest, meanwhile, said its new CRJs will be more fuel efficient than earlier models.

The new CRJs, Snow said, are dubbed NextGen aircraft. They are more fuel efficient and more comfortable, according to Bombardier. They have larger windows, bigger bins, more headroom and improved lighting.

The new jets will begin arriving late next year. Eighteen of the new jets will fly on the United Airlines routes, and four will fly for Delta Airlines.

The company's order for new CRJ regional jets will allow SkyWest to retire 23 of its Embraer EMB-120 aircraft, the 30-seat turboprop airplanes that fly to smaller markets such as Rapid City's.

The original CRJs were all 50-passenger aircraft. They were a big hit when they began arriving at smaller airports in the early 1990s. Passengers liked the speed and the quiet ride. Airlines liked the small size and lower operating costs that made it possible to serve small cities.

More recent CRJs have gotten bigger. The largest NextGen CRJ model can hold up to 100 passengers.

Contact Dan Daly at 394-8421 or at dan.daly@rapidcityjournal.com