The Twisted Danish Sense of Humor

Accidents/Incidents, Q400

You have to love the Danes. It’s cold and dark for much of the year up there, so you know it has to be their sense of humor that gets them through until summer. This time, it’s the Q400 that’s in their sights after having several landing gear problems on SAS-operated flights.

Danish media conglomerate DR has put up a new game on its website called Dash ‘n Crash. For those who only know the Q400 by its short name, this might not be that funny. The airplane’s full name is the Dash 8 Q400. Ah, yes. You know this is going to be fun.

As the game asks, “Tør du lande et Dash-fly?” In English, I believe that translates to “Isn’t flying the Dash 8 more fun than eating pickled herring?” And oh yes, it is. I’m guessing your interest won’t last long when you realize it is impossible to land the Q400 without the gear either collapsing or falling off the airplane entirely. Sweet. Have at it yourself:

07_11_20 dashncrash

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8 comments on “The Twisted Danish Sense of Humor

  1. Eh I thought it was fun.. Although I get a kick out of the fact that the plane will land, come to a stop in an insanely short rollout, then the wheel will fall off.. Thats funny.

  2. On the topic of airplane games – do you have any recommendations for cool airplane flying games that one can access online? Nothing too complicated – but it would be fun to pretend to be a pilot of commercial jet and fly it around! Especially one where the wheel doesn’t always fall off after landing :)

  3. hold on, it’s not “cold and dark for much of the year up there” most of the time, that’s the northern end of norway you’re thinking about. copenhagen has a climate pretty much like portland, oregon. I know this because I grew up in flensburg, germany, which is less than two hours from there. it gets dark around 6pm in the winter time but that’s about it.

    also … dr is their public broadcasting channel -much like the BBC is to the UK- but conglomerate… eh, that’s overstating it.

  4. Looks to me like at its worst, Kobenhavn gets just a few seconds over 7 hours of sunlight per day. That day, the sun will rise at 838a and set at 338p. They also tend to have a lot of cloud cover during the winter months. Portland gets 8 hours and 42 minutes of sunlight per day at its worst.

    In LA, where I live, our worst day gets us 8 minutes shy of 10 hours of sunlight. Sunrise is at 656a and sunset is at 448p. It’s only cloudy for an entire day when a storm moves through or the rare day when the marine layer doesn’t burn off.

    As far as I’m concerned, it’s cold and dark in Denmark!

  5. I’m sorry to inform you but “Tør du lande et Dash-fly?” means “Do you dare to land a Dash plane?” ;-) And not all Danes like pickled herring ;-P

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