Memo Canberra and regional sky warriors: the Virgin Blue buzz box, or turbo-prop, is on its way to an airport near you.

Virgin Blue this morning announced the acquisition-by-alliance of 18 brand new larger capacity turbo-props (but the model is still a secret) that will be flown for it by WA based Skywest  airlines.

In its ASX announcement Virgin Blue emphasizes that the new buzz boxes, for which it provides the paint job, will be used to compete for the mining industry fly-in-fly-out contracts, which are a good earner for Qantaslink, and Queensland’s Alliance Airlines.

But Virgin Blue CEO John Borghetti has also indicated that the economics of the turbo props, which will be either the Canadian Q400 design used by Qantas, or the competing ATR-72 design made in Europe, are unbeatable over shorter distances.

They will be used to develop both new and existing Virgin Blue routes.

Borghetti hinted at the turbo-prop acquisition last year when he put six Virgin Blue Embraer E-70 jets on the market. The E-70s are a smaller version of the E-90 jet, and mainly used between Canberra-Sydney and on some country routes in Queensland as well as to Albury, Mildura and Port Macquarie in NSW.

The creature comfort of a 72 seat turbo-prop in economy seating isn’t anywhere near that of a similarly sized wider seated, lovely, quiet, Embraer jet, but they cost much less over shorter flights to run, so, get over it.

However there is another element missing in today’s announcement, and that is whether a premium fare cabin will be included in the new things with the vibrating rotating knives hanging off the wings.

If statements by Borghetti and his predecessor Brett Godfrey are still valid, the turbo-props will indeed offer a better more spacious seat for fat cats flying into and out of Canberra,  creating another headache for Qantas, which currently squeezes all fare types into the same mean seats in a Q400.