Been in quite a few, myself. Primarily Dash-8 type planes, but also in an Otter and a Pilatus PC-12, the Beechcraft King Air and others. I didn’t think they were all that bad.
I flew from Cleveland to Columbus in June on a turbo prop. As someone who has flying issues, flying on a day where thunderstorms were about, I can tell you that the turbulence was not fun. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that degree of up-and-down motion on a flight before. I’m also a big guy, and the seats were a much tighter fit than on any passenger plane I’d flown on before.
That being said, I survived it, much like every other flight I’ve ever taken. 
Here is what Ron White has to say about small turbo props.
ETA: YouTube link with sound.
I’ve flown Saab 340s from Memphis, to Greenville, MS. I love it.
I have flown on a bunch of them all over the U.S. and Caribbean. I love airplanes in general and I like them just fine. The only issue I had was one on a flight from Shreveport, LA to New Orleans, LA. The only passengers were me, a really old lady and a black guy who said he had never flown before. We took off and the door wasn’t closed exactly right apparently. There was some kind of crimp in the seal and it made this horrible shrieking, whistling noise when we got to altitude. The pilots apologized and pressed on while we covered our ears. It wasn’t a very long flight and the sound went away when we descended but that wasn’t too fun.
I like them. They’re fun. They feel more like flying and less like cramming into a crowded long thin room that magically a few hours later is in a different city.
Back when I was traveling semi-regularly from Seattle to Montana, the usual aircraft was the Lockheed 188 Electra. Definitely not your father’s (or son’s) Dash-8.
The article mentions “high noise levels in the cabin forward of the wings, caused by propeller resonance,” solved by redesigning the nacelles to tilt the engines upward. I have a feeling that the aircraft I rode in were never retrofitted; if they were, I’d hate to think what the noise was like beforehand.
Another strong recollection was looking up at the mountains as we passed them (although this was more likely due to the flight segments being too short to gather any decent altitude, rather than a limitation of the aircraft itself).
Alas, like being tarred & feathered or ridden on a rail, the opportunity to travel by Electra seems to have disappeared.
I’m a Dash 8 captain and have been flying them for a few years now. The noise thing depends a lot on the engines and where you are sitting. I remember flying on an Embraer E110 Bandeirante and I was sitting nearly in line with the props and at take-off power it was really very noisy, I could almost feel the sound distorting in my ears, in the cruise it was better. The Dash 8 by comparison doesn’t seem any where near as bad and I can quite happily sit in the back with no hearing protection. Also the Q series Dash 8s have active noise cancellation in the cabin which probably helps a bit. Ours don’t have it but I still don’t find them to be particularly loud.
I’m happy enough to be a passenger in any aircraft that’s got a big enough fuselage cross section that I can stand up in the isle. So Dash 8 and ATR good, Metroliner and Bandeirante bad.
That wasn’t the turbo-prop’s fault that you had ear troubles, there is no practical difference between a turbo-prop and a jet pressurisation system from the passenger’s perspective.
I fly in one all the time, but C-130s probably don’t count for the purposes of this discussion.
I once flew to Manchester (as in the one in the UK) for a friend’s memorial service. When it was time to go home, I sat at the airport waiting for a flight to Bergen (as in Norway), and noticed a green-and-white Widerøe turboprop was sitting outside the gate. That’s funny, I thought, what’s a little Widerøe plane doing all the way over here in England?
It suddenly dawned on me that it was going back to Norway. And I was going to be on it :eek:
So I’ve flown across the North Sea in a turboprop. Widerøe flies pretty much all Dash-8s of different descriptions, so I assume that’s what it was, though I don’t remember details. Really, it wasn’t all that bad. The weather was fairly calm that night, so the turbulence wasn’t bad. It was noisy inside, but I had earplugs and a book to read so I managed to ignore the noise. And the seats were actually wider and more comfortable than on a commuter jet, for some reason. I wouldn’t sweat it for a short flight.
I’m very fond of propeller aircraft (known as “Propjets” when I was a kid, for some reason) and for years in NZ- certainly into the mid-1990s, at least- most of the flights between the major centres and anywhere that wasn’t a major centre was undertaken by a propjet- generally Hawker-Siddely 748s, Fokker Friendships, De Havilland Dash-8s or ATR-72s (all of which I’ve flown in an enjoyed).
I’ve also flown in a Grumman Goose flying boat (including water take-off and landing!) and various Cessna and Beechcraft twin-engine aircraft
Qantas in Australia are still operating Dash-8 and Bandeirantes; I flew on a Dash-8 for work a couple of years back and it wasn’t especially loud IMHO- louder than a jet, but not annoyingly so.
One big advantage of propjets is that they fly lower than a jetliner, so you can actually see the ground as you’re flying overhead- so you’ve got a view to entertain you for the flight, instead of just looking at endless clouds or ocean.
noisy - seriously recommend the ear plugsand/or a really good set of Bose headphones - and a lot like sitting on a mixmaster (and not in a good way:p) in a bicycle basket. i flew from Indianapolis to Chicago years ago on one and vowed never again.
“Propjet” is probably a better descriptive term than “turboprop”. They’re essentially a jet engine driving a propeller. The PW123 engines on the Dash 8 get about 10% of their propulsive thrust from the exhaust.
turboprops probably do a little better with bird strikes.
If they really were propjets the reason is that they were a combination of a jet and piston engine. In a piston engine, like those in a DC-3, internal combustion simply drives the propellers. A propjet engine works much like a regular jet but, but instead of being used to provide forward thrust, most of the escaping exhaust is used to turn the turbines that turn the propeller blades. A small fraction of the thrust from the rearward escaping gas does go to provide forward thrust, but it’s mainly the propellers that move the plane.
Propjets generally fly a little faster than pure-props, but not by much.
For this reason the DC-9/MD-80 is one of my favorite planes to ride in. Almost all the seats are forward of the engines, so you get a quieter ride. Also the the 3-and-2 seating layout (IME) makes for feeling a lot less cramped.
I’d love to fly in one of those. I was at an air show at Gowen Field once and watched a Idaho Air Guard C-130 take off - empty - and as soon as the wheels cleared the runway it looked like he stood it right on the tail and shot straight up. Whee!
I’ve flown on all kinds of turboprops. Fokker F-27, Dash 8, and Beech 1900. They are just fine. The worst turbulence is on hot days with lots of thermals. Flew from Seattle to Helena once that was constant up and down up and down. It was so bad some passengers didn’t reboard in Missoula for the last leg. I was fine, but I remember my wife’s face was green by the time we touched in Helena. She couldn’t have taken another 5 minutes without blowing lunch.
Watch out for the overwing seats on the Beechcraft (19-seater). The ones I’ve flown in had a serious hump in row 5 or 6 – almost like sitting on top of the transmission hump in a car, except it’s perpendicular to the front of the craft. You ride with your knees under your chin, and you’re not going to get anything under the seatback in front of you. My buddy used to call this the “bitch seat”. Nuff said…
Dash-8’s vary in loudness, but the loud ones are like flying on a lawnmower.
One of the best flights I’ve ever had was on a turboprop. Boarded in darkness in St. George, Utah, and took off at about dawn bound for Salt Lake City. I had a right-side seat; not a cloud in the sky, watched the slow sunrise over the mountains for the whole trip. And the flight attendant was the most drop-dead gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen.
Your experience may differ, of course.
It’s a little misleading to say the propjet is a combination of a jet and piston engine. The only part of a piston engine that is common with a propjet is the propeller which isn’t a part of the engine at all, but part of the propulsive system.
I think it’s important here to define terms and to try not to confuse the propulsion system with the mechanics of the engine itself. Propjet is another name for a turboprop, they both refer, as you say, to a turbine engine that uses the exhaust gases to drive a propeller. The propeller is primarily responsible for the thrust from the engine. These are generally found on medium sized commercial transport aircraft and increasingly on smaller aircraft.
A turbojet is a turbine engine that uses the exhaust gases to provide thrust directly. These are not generally found on aircraft anymore as they’re noisy and not as efficient as modern turbofan engines.
A turbofan is the same as a turbojet but at the front of the engine, before the compressor stages, there is a large ducted fan. A lot of the air going into the air intake bypasses the engine itself and provides thrust much the same way a propeller does. These are the engines found on modern commercial jet aircraft. They are quieter and more efficient than turbojets.
“Jet” colloquially refers to turbojet and turbofan engines.
All of the above, turbojets, turboprops, and turbofans have at their heart a gas turbine engine that is distinct in operation from a piston engine.
A piston engine can be found in small propeller driven aircraft and is the same type of engine as used in most cars. It’s important to note that a piston engine doesn’t have to drive a propeller, it could drive a ducted fan.
A piston engine is sometimes turbocharged. A turbocharger uses exhaust gases to drive a small turbine that forces air and fuel into the engine. It compensates for decreasing performance with increasing altitude. Turbo charged engines are still piston engines and are not “turboprops” despite the use of the word “turbo.” A “supercharger” performs the same function as a turbocharger but it runs directly off the crankshaft rather than using exhaust gases.