Originally Posted by
SmoothOnTop
737-700 pax 137 .79 cruise 4200 pph
c200 pax 50 .74 cruise 2900 pph
By those numbers, the 737-700 with 137 seats burns 30.66 pph/seat, while the CRJ-200 burns 58 pph/seat.
The "break-even" point between the CRJ and the 737 with 137 pax is 95 passengers.
If you can get ~70% load factor on the 737 with 137 seats, you are doing better in the "pounds per hour per passenger" ratio than the CRJ-200. Of course that discounts total revenue brought in, as well as acquisition, crew, and maintenance costs between the types, and actual fuel burn based on stage lengths.
My point? Numbers are easily manipulated to suit your agenda, and there is MUCH more to consider when deciding what fleet type to put into what market other than simply the hourly fuel burns. If a market will support narrowbodies and they are available for that route by all means use them, but lets not start thinking about flying RJs between cities where you'll only have 40-50 average passengers simply because of the per-seat fuel burns.