Originally Posted by
Budgiesmuggler
It would appear now that the critical factor is MTOW and meaningful range. Do the number of seats and MTOW go hand in hand to keep mainline in check or would it benefit regionals and pilots to fly the latest equipment based on the 50/76 seat capacity within the aircraft regardless on MTOW. (Or an MTOW within reason). With no other new regional aircraft in development will it mean a return to the prop era with ATR's for example to replace the aging E145/CRJ200 fleets at some point?
It's not up to regional pilots, scope is "owned" by mainline pilot groups.
A few regional pilots would prefer no further erosion in scope. Many don't care, and the lifers of course have nothing to lose, they'd fly narrowbodies for a token raise, given the opportunity.
Mitsubishi badly miscalculated when they blew off US scope limits when designing their airplane... their business case was based on the *assumption* that US majors (the best market in the world for RJs) would "take care of" their scope limits. Pilots dug in their heels after the lost decade and mitsubishi is still waiting for scope rollbacks. Skywest was the largest launch customer, with 100 notional orders. Those were on the books for many years, but were cancelled recently.
Mainline pilots might make a concession for *slightly* heavier RJs if they get something in return. But many pilots I know are hard-over on no more scope concessions. It might even be more emotional than logical at this point.
The fix may be to simply "re-certify" heavy RJ's at a lower MTOW and/or seat count. That typically meets the scope language, and is also more tolerable because the certification is hard to violate, unlike measures such as roping off a few seats or policy limits on cargo weight. That's what they did with the CRJ550. The downside is that the propulsion and structure are still physically optimized for a higher weight, so you take an economic hit by operating an airplane below it's actual design capacity load.
RJ manufacturers really need to either make big RJ's which are economical at mainline (A220 might fit the bill), or build an option into their designs to comply with "industry standard" scope.