I just got a random thought:

If BBD or EMB were to stretch the CR2 or 145, respectively, to allow a dedicated F product/cabin and still keep the aircraft at 50 seats (4F 46Y for example), would it be possible to see a resurgence in the 50 seat RJ? It would still only need 1 FA and the revenue from the F product could offset the natural inefficiencies that plague 50 seat aircraft.

I guess you could, but why would you want to? Any flight that it will be on would most likely be too short for F to really matter. I know airlines like UA like to stretch the legs of the RJs, but for the vast majority of routes I wouldn’t think the increased revenue would be there.

It would just be seat room (would that be 1x1 on an ERJ?). No galley, one flight attendant kind of rules out any premium onboard services.

Sure you could do a spirit setup with the "big Front seats". No reason you couldn't do that setup.

The reality of 50seat RJs they tend to not fly far and having two different classes would be too much hassle to keep track with so few seats. Most CR2s also have one flight attendant so that's another complicating factor for their contracts etc. It makes more sense to operate a CR7 if the route has demand for a premium seats.

The ideal 50 seater would have probably 9 F (3 rows) and 40 Y seats (10 rows). If you worked hard, it might be possible to get this configuration in a CR2 using latest seats; I don't know. CR7 works fine in this way, but 70 seats is too much for some markets.

Business customers fly more often than tourists. Some fly a given market weekly. A lot of CR2 destinations are business travel. VFF business pax want to be in premium class. So this is has always been a problem. And still is

From a service perspective, if you have a premium cabin with 6-9 seats, you will need a dedicated FA. So at this point, you may as well apply the idea to a CR7 or CR9, just as we see with many US airlines, and benefit from the extra Y seats.

To aid operational flexibility in extraordinary situations, where a crew member falls sick en route or is otherwise unavailable to perform their duties, I wonder if airlines could apply for a dispensation where a 65 seat CRJ7 could be operated by a single crew-member so long as the pax load was paper-limited to 50 seats. I've seen it done regularly on 50-60 seat aircraft in Europe and have heard it's been applied to 70+ seat ATR 72s, but I'm not sure how US authorities would look at this.

TWA772LR wrote:

I just got a random thought:

If BBD or EMB were to stretch the CR2 or 145, respectively, to allow a dedicated F product/cabin and still keep the aircraft at 50 seats (4F 46Y for example), would it be possible to see a resurgence in the 50 seat RJ? It would still only need 1 FA and the revenue from the F product could offset the natural inefficiencies that plague 50 seat aircraft.

Design, tooling, and recert costs of a stretch to get a few F seats? You've got to be kidding. Take out three rows of 2x2 coach and add two rows of 1x2 First. Then ask why nobody has done this - because you need 2x the avg fare from 6 F seats to make up for 12 coach seats being pulled out.

NW actually planned to do a 44-seat CRJ-200 with F (They did an all-coach CRJ-200 or CRJ-440 officially because of scope requirements). It was to have 2 rows of F in a standard CRJ 1-2 arrangement. If you look at the galley on CRJs delivered to NW Airlink carriers, you will notice they have significantly different configurations. That is because they were designed with room for an additional cart, additional containers and even the hookups for ovens. Unfortunately, as we all know, it never came to fruition.

I've heard at my airline that the operating cost of the CR9 is only about 10% more than the CR2. If a route demands a F section, then a few F fares will more than pay for putting a CR9 on the route. No need to re-engineer an inferior product for such a marginal operating cost savings.

floridaflyboy wrote:

NW actually planned to do a 44-seat CRJ-200 with F (They did an all-coach CRJ-200 or CRJ-440 officially because of scope requirements). It was to have 2 rows of F in a standard CRJ 1-2 arrangement. If you look at the galley on CRJs delivered to NW Airlink carriers, you will notice they have significantly different configurations. That is because they were designed with room for an additional cart, additional containers and even the hookups for ovens. Unfortunately, as we all know, it never came to fruition.

Correct, most of them are still flying in that galley configuration. In my opinion, its a more open galley than the traditional CR2 galley.

DiamondFlyer wrote:

floridaflyboy wrote:

NW actually planned to do a 44-seat CRJ-200 with F (They did an all-coach CRJ-200 or CRJ-440 officially because of scope requirements). It was to have 2 rows of F in a standard CRJ 1-2 arrangement. If you look at the galley on CRJs delivered to NW Airlink carriers, you will notice they have significantly different configurations. That is because they were designed with room for an additional cart, additional containers and even the hookups for ovens. Unfortunately, as we all know, it never came to fruition.

Correct, most of them are still flying in that galley configuration. In my opinion, its a more open galley than the traditional CR2 galley.

Yep. When I was at XJ, I always enjoyed our CR2s. So much more room for everything in the galleys versus the couple of CR2s we got from OH.

floridaflyboy wrote:

DiamondFlyer wrote:

floridaflyboy wrote:

NW actually planned to do a 44-seat CRJ-200 with F (They did an all-coach CRJ-200 or CRJ-440 officially because of scope requirements). It was to have 2 rows of F in a standard CRJ 1-2 arrangement. If you look at the galley on CRJs delivered to NW Airlink carriers, you will notice they have significantly different configurations. That is because they were designed with room for an additional cart, additional containers and even the hookups for ovens. Unfortunately, as we all know, it never came to fruition.

Correct, most of them are still flying in that galley configuration. In my opinion, its a more open galley than the traditional CR2 galley.

Yep. When I was at XJ, I always enjoyed our CR2s. So much more room for everything in the galleys versus the couple of CR2s we got from OH.

Just like at 9E now, the few CR2's they have from EV are the oddballs now.

You wouldn't do 4 F at least on the CRJ fuselage. Probably 6 (2 rows of 3), so it would be 6 F 44 Y. On the ERJ fuselage it wouldn't really work (there's the two single seats at the front that can't be grown without impeding the aisle, so there's really no place to put it unless you randomly put some 1-1 rows after those two seats only on the port side).

However, I don't see it as significantly improving the economics of the aircraft. nobody is going to pay for F on an aircraft like that.

NW did do some tests regarding re-configuring their CRJ-200's to 3 F, 46 Y but decided against it.

Northwest actually configured one CRJ in the below-mentioned configuration and parked it at MSP for a couple of days of (very secretive) testing with HVC's. Anyone who boarded the plane had to sign non-disclosure and had all personal items that could be used for photos or notes confiscated. For years, nothing, if anything, got out about this project. I believe it died with the fuel explosion and the Ch 11 filing.

floridaflyboy wrote:

NW actually planned to do a 44-seat CRJ-200 with F (They did an all-coach CRJ-200 or CRJ-440 officially because of scope requirements). It was to have 2 rows of F in a standard CRJ 1-2 arrangement. If you look at the galley on CRJs delivered to NW Airlink carriers, you will notice they have significantly different configurations. That is because they were designed with room for an additional cart, additional containers and even the hookups for ovens. Unfortunately, as we all know, it never came to fruition.

PlymSpotter wrote:

To aid operational flexibility in extraordinary situations, where a crew member falls sick en route or is otherwise unavailable to perform their duties, I wonder if airlines could apply for a dispensation where a 65 seat CRJ7 could be operated by a single crew-member so long as the pax load was paper-limited to 50 seats. I've seen it done regularly on 50-60 seat aircraft in Europe and have heard it's been applied to 70+ seat ATR 72s, but I'm not sure how US authorities would look at this.

The CFRs use aircraft seating capacity, not paper seating capacity for the 1:50 rule. So unless they ripped out 20 seats to go with the paper seating restriction, and had updated weight and balance info for the new config, I don’t think it’d work. Wouldn’t be surprised if there was some other reason why it wouldn’t work, but that’s what I got off the top of my head.

The 4Y+/46Y config DL uses in their CR2s is probably as fancy as this model will ever get.