Originally Posted by rickair7777
The pendulum is already swinging back against the RJ's. 50 seaters are labor effecient only because regionals are able to operate them with 19 seat turboprop wages. But they are terribly fuel-ineffecient.
You obvoiusly have not flown into ROS or TUS lately; they are chock full of parked CRJ200s. Bombardier has CLOSED the CRJ200 production line. The 70 and 90 seaters are covering the bottom of the 737/DC-9 niche, you rarely see them on "turboprop" routes.
RJ's don't necessarily have to turn a profit, however. Some majors use them simply to bring passengers to their hubs. USAir used to provide the RJ leg from the northeast to to PHL at NO additional cost for passengers connecting somewhere else.
Well thats a good thing..... it should go back to the way it was before. Where the regionals just did short local flying and left the rest to the mainline. I think the mainlines should take the RJ's for them selves, and have their regionals go back to turbo props and only do the very short flying. I know AC operated their RJ's(made tons of money doing it) for 1995-2005. Was there any other airlines that directly operated the RJ's?
By the way I dont know how some of the regionals got their hands on EMB 170's. Without question those belong at the MAjor airlines.
A shift back to reducing regional operation and increasing mainline operation would be great for the regional pilots now for getting hired at the majors. I wonder what effect it would have on future pilots tho