Here is an interesting article worth a little debate : Regional carriers jettison 50-seat planes
The 50-seat jets once prized by carriers such as Delta Air Lines Inc. are being culled from U.S. fleets as higher fuel and maintenance bills make them too expensive to fly.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/07/BUNB1F86HP.DTL#ixzz0zCWNEXz4
By: *ALLIANCE - 12th September 2010 at 21:41
As long as they replace them with something and dont just drop frequency. Flexibility is key to the customer on most of the short,thin business routes and dropping from, say 7 daily rotations on a RJ to 2-3 on a babybus probably wont go down too well.
I guess this is where the Dash8-D will do good. As i understand its quite good on fuel, comparable to a jet in terms of speed on the missions they are used and can climb/descend well to meet ATC requirements around busy airports.
I have flown a few (maybe 15) sectors on RJs both in the U.K and the US and i have to agree with the article that they suck from a passenger perspective. A packed CRJ 100/200 is hell in the sky. ER4 a little better, but not much after 45minutes or so.
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September 11, 2010 at 7:46 am