The airlines have been increasingly using the “regional” jets on longer legs between major cities. A quick check on CRJ7’s finds SKW6379 , a 3.5 hour, 1285nm flight.
CRJ2 longest flight currently FLG5737 , a 1000nm, 3 hour flight.
There’s nothing “regional” about those legs.
Nor is Shuttlecraft 7710 , while not that long, flys direct between DFW and ORD, major city pairs.
Speaking of E170’s, Brickyard 3465 is a 3:15 flight between PHL and IAH.
My point? I’m sure there are reasons for the airlines to choose to fly these legs with an RJ rather than a mainline aircraft, whether due to pax loads or economics. But at what point do the “regional” airlines get bigger with more flights than the mainline carrier that operates them? I’m waiting for the day that the mainline routes are only the transcontinental routes and everything else is operated by the regional, whether wholly owned or farmed out.
Second point: Who the hell wants to sit in an RJ for 3+ hours!?
The CRJ-900 has a capacity about that of the original DC-9 so it shouldn’t be too bad on a long flight. The seat pitch in economy is 31" and is 2+2 seating (first class is 35" and 1+2) so it’s not too bad for people about my height (5’6").
Don’t forget that what is not considered regional jets today were, when they first came out, actually regional jets without the regional label attached to them. The DC-9-10/15, for example, was a fairly short ranged aircraft with a seating capacity right about the capacity of the larger regional jets by Canadair and Embraer.
I just recalled something I read a while back, about the time the regional jets first started flying in airline service.
One of the reasons for using regional jets would be for flights to bypass hubs entirely (e.g. COA flying between BPT and ORD or UAL flying between SLC and IAH) However, it appears that the thinking has changed. They are still used on longer flights as envisioned but they still fly to a hub.
I did manage to have the unparalleled joy of riding a snowmobile from my business partner’s family estate south of Amherst to our office on the waterfront in downtown during one of their all too frequent lake effect blizzards.
The snow was so high that we were able to ride up the drift in front of our warehouse on Ganson St. and right onto the loading dock.
I also witnessed an extraordinary display of the Northern Lights in BUF that year.
They fly CRJs!! [That’s why the red flag came out in that discussion]
