Boeing eying new 50 seater RJ.
 

Interesting that now Boeing is taking notice on the lack of a new fifty seat jet.

"Sao Paulo - Boeing considers various opportunities in the planned joint venture with Embraer, including a new 50-seater aircraft that will be developed with the know-how of its Brazilian partner "

https://airlinerwatch.com/untitled-2/

Is there some special sauce that would make a 50 seater economical now?

Tough.

In their favor: Fuel efficiency of newer engines.

The big hurdle: New design airplanes (ex. 175) have a lot of expensive tech, FBW, advanced engines, gucci cockpit stuff. All that extra cost has to be amortized over the life of the plane. Imagine a 50 seat version of the E-Jet... essentially the same cost, minus X amount of structural materials and cabin fittings. But only 2/3 of the revenue potential of a 76-seater.

Would be economical on a few select high dollar markets, but then you have to amortize R&D over a small number of planes, driving unit cost even higher.

Boeing/Embraer will have to come up with some pretty revolutionary mfg processes (BA is actually working on that) to cut costs, or somehow design a very bare-bones jet with all the costly bells and whistles removed.

Or they retool the Praetor for the regional market... Wouldn't be that much of a stretch.

A LOT of avionics are getting cheape
 

AVIONICS COSTS ARE COMING DOWN. The technology is maturing.


And it is not necessarily a SMALL number of planes. Replacement of US 50 seaters alone would be 1500 aircraft. By way of comparison, the entire Delta fleet is under a thousand aircraft (exclusive of their regional aircraft).

It will be done because Mainline managers will need a new whipsaw device.

701EV

Retool the what?
Let's hope they don't have any intention of remaking the emb-145.
It will have to be comparable to the 175 or CRJ atmosphere cabin for comfort and room. Avionics- the EMB package will be fine, doesn’t need to have all the “bells and whistles” like a 787.
Engines- geared will be too heavy, I don’t know what’s out there but there must be something more efficient today?

If there is an interest from the legacy carriers to keep 50 seat flying after 2030ish I think they will start building them again in some fashion. We have to keep in mind that Boeing has big airplanes to sell so they have the ability to scale pricing up and down to be able to make a profit on one jet order if they commit to order another at a loss of profit as long as an overall profit is made. We will see how it works out though. I personally think that as long as the economy holds some what and travel demand keeps growing the new 50 seater is dead unless we go with a turboprop like the the ATR which legacies hate.

Embraer could design a clean-sheet, true large-cabin competitor to the Global 6500/7500 and Gulfstream 600/650 in a way the Legacy 650E and Lineage 1000 are not...and use that airframe as basis for a new 50 seat regional jet.

The crj200 is a 53k lb airplane. The large-cabin competition referenced is around twice that. I doubt there’s much design overlap between a 50,000 lb plane that will do 7-100 mile legs a day and a 100,000lb one designed to do 7,100 miles at 0.9

Different wing, different pressurization, different systems.