Regional airliner

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Flybe Bombardier Q400

Régional ERJ 145 operating for Air France

A regional airliner is a small airliner designed to fly between 35 and 100 passengers from point to point as efficiently as possible. They are often operated by commuter airlines or by government militaries to transport troops between bases, although some large legacy carriers operate their own regional fleets. The regional jet (RJ) is a jet-engined aircraft of the same class that has become the aircraft of choice for most domestic operations.

Contents

1 History

1.1 Turboprop designs
1.2 Regional jets

2 Further developments
3 Features
4 List of regional airliners

4.1 1950s
4.2 1960s
4.3 1970s
4.4 1980s
4.5 1990s
4.6 2000s

History

Beginning in the early 1960s, commercial air passengers began traveling on jet-powered aircraft with seating capacity from about 70 passengers to over 300. While these new jet-powered aircraft were a great stride forward and were popular in comparison to propellor aircraft, some of these jet aircraft were too large to be economical on shorter routes or on routes between smaller communities and the "mega-hubs" of the major FAR 121 carriers.

In the early 1980s, with the advent of deregulation, these earlier generation airliners operated by the existing previously regulated FAR 121 carriers, became more expensive to operate to these smaller communities compared to a group of new airline operators, many operating initially under FAR 135 rules. These new entrants, operating very small 10-19 seat turboprop equipment such as the Beechcraft 99, SA-226/227 Metroliner, the Handley Page Jetstream, and later the Beech 1900, had much lower overall cost structures that particularly suited these shorter routes and grew very quickly.

Turboprop designs

These new entrants, and in many cases their larger major airline partners, asked manufacturers to design and build a new generation of short-range turboprop powered aircraft. de Havilland Canada was in a particularly good position at this point, having just introduced a new aircraft with very low operational costs, the de Havilland Canada Dash 8, which soon took over a good portion of the market.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} A number of other aviation firms decided to enter the market, and by the late 1980s turboprop-powered aircraft included the ATR 42 and ATR 72 from the Avion de Transport Régional consortium, Dornier 328, Jetstream 41 and Saab 340 and Saab 2000. Consequently there were a relatively large number of aircraft on offer in this sector of the market. . Due to the high level of competition, production of a number of these types ceased. In 2006 only the ATR 42/72 models and the DASH-8 remain in production.

Development of more cost effetive jet aircraft in the 1990s (see below) led to a significant decline in turboprop sales by the remaining manufacturers. Increasing fuel costs since 2001 have made the costs of jet operations more prohibitive, resulted in some recovery in the turboprop sector.

Regional jets

Many air passengers were not satisfied with propeller aircraft for a number of reasons. Propeller aircraft are slower than jets, and they typically do not have air conditioning available during enplaning and deplaning operations. In most cases they cannot be connected to a jetway, have significantly reduced cabin size, and may lack a flight attendant and an on-board lavatory. Performance issues include the inability to load a full complement of passengers when high fuel loads are required due to weather and air traffic delays. Yet these new small airline companies, conscious of their need to survive economically and provide a financial return to their owners, promoted the use of small turbine powered propellor commuter aircraft on routes extending to smaller cities. What was needed were more efficient small jet aircraft to fill a new niche, long routes with fewer passengers.

The first widely successful regional jet design was the CL-600 Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) in the early 1990s, which soon started replacing almost all other new aircraft purchases for these new regional airlines^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}. The CRJ's range is enough to fill mid-range routes as well, routes previously served by larger aircraft such as the Boeing 737 and DC-9. The aircraft are very efficient and they were originally intended to be used for direct airport-to-airport flights, bypassing hubs.

Further developments

The main competitor which emerged for the CRJ was the Embraer EMB-145. Fairchild Dornier introduced the 328JET to compete, but went bankrupt soon afterwards and the type did not enter large scale production. and a Fokker-ERNO design ended when Fokker went bankrupt before the design was finalized. Bombardier, which had previously purchased Shorts, Canadair, de Havilland Canada and LearJet, turned down the offer to purchase Fokker, and the design forecasted to replace the shelved BRJX died with Fokker.

Smaller jetliners have been a part of the market since the early days of jet airliners. The Sud Caravelle would today be placed in the "small" category due to size alone Other examples include the 40-seat Yakovlev Yak-40 and mid-sized BAe 146 and Fokker F100. The key difference between these designs and current regional jets is operational costs, the new designs cost significantly less to operate, making them suitable for many different roles, as opposed to simply being "short-mid range airliners".

In 2005, the "regional jet" boom suddenly collapsed, as increasing fuel prices and airline bankruptcies led to a rethinking of route structures. The high per-seat operational costs of the classic 50-seat regional jet have been exacerbated by an environment of ever-lowering fares. Furthermore, RJs increasingly were assigned to operate flights of two hours or more. This led to passenger complaints, as their comfort and ergonomics compare unfavorably to the larger "mainline" jets which they replaced on these flights. In late 2005, Canadair shut down its CRJ-200 production line and Embraer has ceased producing the ERJ-145 series, marking the end of an era for the regional jet. The new trend is for larger aircraft with better economics, exemplified by Canadair's 70-seat CRJ-700 and the 70-110-seat Embraer E-Jets series. The E-Jets in particular blur the line between "mainline" and "regional," as their cabin comfort is comparable or superior to traditional narrowbody jets like the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 while offering ranges of over 2,000 miles. By comparison, the original DC-9 jet aircraft were designed to seat approximately 75 passengers.

Features

Regional airliners are typically flown by the regional airline partners of the larger international airlines. An aircraft's lifetime cost is a combination of three factors: the purchase price, maintenance costs, and operational costs such as fuel use.

Seating on regional airliners tends to be narrow and tight, and passengers typically are restricted from bringing on board carry-on items which would fit without difficulty in the overhead bins of larger aircraft. While designed primarily for medium stage lengths, RJs may now be found supplementing major trunk routes alongside traditional larger jet aircraft on routings including Chicago to Houston; Atlanta to Dallas; and Cleveland to Newark. RJs allow airlines to open new "long, thin" routings with jet equipment which heretofore did not exist, such as Atlanta to Monterrey, Mexico. RJs have also meant a return of jet service to cities where full-size jet service had departed over a decade ago, such as Macon, Georgia.

The notion that regional jet aircraft are less expensive (per seat mile) than traditional jets is a common misconception. On a per mile basis the RJ's cost can in fact be higher. The reason that regional jet operators provide an economic benefit to traditional airlines comes from the fee-per-departure payment structure under which these aircraft are operated. In this payment structure, a traditional airline contracts with a regional airline company on a per departure or per flight basis regardless of the number of passengers or the length of the flight. The traditional airline gets to keep all the revenue from the ticket sale and only pays the regional partner the agreed to amount. These contracts tend to be long term agreements, typically 10 year terms. The regional airline partner can then be relatively sure of the revenue side and only has to control cost in order to earn a modest return. However, these "regional airlines," now really "small jet providers" of contracted aircraft, have been squeezed by airline bankruptcies, fleet reductions and increasing operating costs. Legacy carriers have no longer been willing to shoulder burdensome losses from guaranteed-profit contracts with their small jet providers, and accordingly have played carrier against carrier in a low-bid game that has left hundreds of RJs idle in the desert and others potentially on their way to mothballs.

The idea that regional jets would provide point-to-point service and bypass the hub-and-spoke system may not be materializing as it was expected. As of January 2003, 90% of all regional jet flights in the United States had a hub or major airport at one end of that flight, and this number has been gradually increasing since 1995.

List of regional airliners

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

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