What's better Qantas dash 8's or virgin Australia's ATR72

What's better Qantas dash 8's or virgin Australia's ATR72

Both poor - to be avoided at all costs. Small, noisy, uncomfortable and very limited hand luggage. If going to Canberra pick a  QF 737 or VA Embraer Flight. Used always to fly to Canberra on Virgin when they were all Embraers or the odd 737. ATR72s are not good - the Virgin Lounges are poor compared to the Qantas Business Lounge which you can use if you are a Platinum QFF flying to Canberra. The Qantas Club  in the Virgin / Jetstar terminal is better than the overcrowded Virgin Lounge at Sydney. Sad but ground service at VA has seemed to have declined recently for me whilst QFF have improved. My experience is that QF is far better than VA if anything goes wrong and you have to be moved to a different flight. Do now  never seem to be able to get advanced seat selection to work on VA for their 737s - even worse on an ATR. Been told this is a function of their impoved IT system bedding down.

Have flown both recently. With the Dash8s you board from the front, dated leather seats but heaps of legroom (at least in the front 2 rows. But excessive noise/vibration in my opinion (not sure about the back though). Overhead bins are VERY small so expect the ground crew to take your larger carry ons and tag them with Premium Hand Luggage tags. You will get it back after deplaning but have to wait for the baggage handlers to unload them. Very annoying

With the ATRs you board from the rear. Tiny stairs. Again leather seats, no recline, but restricted legroom. Last 2 rows are blocked for Platinums (deplane first). Not sure about the front of the plane. Overhead bins are larger. I was able to fit in my Samsonite stroller easily (whereas with Qantas they had to take it away, doubted it would fit anyways).

I'd say between the two, it all comes down to your choice of airline and schedule before having to worry about the actual plane.

Thanks ill keep that in mind

Dash 8 Q400's are a vast improvement over the Q300 and Q200's.  ATR's are rancid and I wouldn't fly them, ever.  

Thank goodness Q is bring 2-class B717 jets onto CBR-SYD and CBR-BNE - the forward cabin in these will be blissfully quiet as the engines are rear mounted.

For what its worth, i have traveled on both these on the BNE-GLT-BNE route many times ....... my experience = Virgin seats on the ATR are hard.

Tell you what - Q400 is faster than the ATR-72. Quite interesting on the first flights out, when Virgin takes off earlier and QF lands first :)

http://www.flightstats.com/go/FlightStatus/flightStatusByRoute.do?departure=%28BNE%29+Brisbane+Airport&arrival=%28GLT%29+Gladstone+Airport&departureDate=2013-06-24&airportQueryTime=12&queryNext=false&queryPrevious=false&sortField=3&airlineToFilter=--+All+Airlines+--&codeshareDisplay=1&x=46&y=3

Another thing i recall is that if you have oversize hand lugguage, with Virgin you hop off at the back, and tagged bags are offloaded right there, rather than wait for QF ground crew to offload and drive to the front of a Q400