Any thoughts on how many more years the ERJs 135/145s will continue to be in service?

 

Depends on how fast demand recovers. Probably credible scenarios from 0-20 years

 

There's no new 50-seaters available and 700's with 50 seats are not economical in most situations, my guess is even if they end up storage for a while the ERJs will end up back in service eventually.

I follow the mfg side of the industry closely, there are no rumblings about new 50 seat designs. Maybe turboprops, but even that's a hard business case since the US airlines have a clear preference for jets... very hard to succeed with a clean-sheet regional aircraft if you can't sell it in the US (ask the people who built RJ's that didn't comply with our scope). Economics/carbon politics might get the US industry over it's prop disdain. Maybe.

 

I’m sure most of the 145s are beginning to get maxed out. It’s amazing they’ve lasted that long considering all the daily abuse they take. The 135s spent nearly half the time in storage so they have a lot of years left. The XRs are somewhere in the middle.

 

A few of our XRs have over 30000 cycles and they are still going strong. Frankly, the only thing truly tired in these airplanes is the avionics. If those could be replaced economically these airplanes could remain in service for another 20-30 years.

 

All depends if a business model will exist that needs 50 seat airplanes. That’s an open question.

 

If there is demand for frequency at small airports, then yes. Otherwise you run one NB/day on Su/Mo/We/Fri.

Frequency has been important to pax in the current era. How could that change?

1. Economy is so bad that low fares trump all other considerations.
2. If fares are too high, most small airport pax can drive a couple-three hours to a bigger town... that's ultimately the challenge for small (true regional) airliners. The majority of pax can drive to a bigger airport if frequency is poor or fares too high.

If your flight is once or twice per day and will force you to either arrive many hours early or worse sit a hub for many hours to connect, it quickly becomes more appealing to drive to another airport... even 4,5,6 hours.

I think there was definitely a market demand/business case for 50-seaters pre-COVID. For existing jets. The long-term problem was that the business case was very, very weak on the mfg. side if you're looking at clean-sheet new designs. A modern 50-seater is going to have most of the same equipment as a NB, and probably all of the same equipment as a 70-seater... with fewer seats to provide an ROI. You save some money of the actual quantity of raw material used, but the design complexity and the labor is almost the same. A little jet engine takes the same labor to build as a big one, same for all the avionics and other systems. You save just a little labor on the airframe (fewer of the repetitive structural parts).

You could save some money by reducing complexity but that usually means lower efficiency/higher fuel burn... pay me now, or pay me later.

 

Are ERJs still in production?

 

No. It's very remotely possible that they retained some ability to re-start production but that's typically not the case with airplanes. Even if you kept all of the tooling and designs, the workforce would mostly have to learn from scratch.

 

well that’s the big question. It’s not a matter if 6x 50 per day vs 2x 150. 4x 64 works pretty well. But scope! But scope! Yes the airport’s that had 4x 64 and 3 x 150 before now get 4x 150

Frequency is expensive. It’s worth the cost if you’re in an arms race. If two other carriers use frequency to steal your pax, you have to respond. If everyone pulls back to half their former selves, maybe everyone stops fighting over Evansville and Tri Cities