The MRJ90 and E175-E2 are done
 

Easy solution: operate them on a mainline certificate.

Or lease them out foreign carriers.

We may be forgetting the success that jetBlue had with the E-190 when few others were flying it. It is possible for the same thing to occur with one of the LCC's or ULCC's. It is also possible for these aircraft to be utilized in other locales by non-US carriers, or in a start up endeavor. I don't think the aircraft are done.

I've been saying for years that foreign airframers who gloss over scope limits when designing large RJs are making a big mistake.

It's no longer a simple matter of making a trip through the BK drive-through to eliminate annoying labor contract provisions.

And it's tough for mainline to make money directly operating RJ's close to 100 seats. At the 100 seat point, you have to pay another FA, and that puts the economics in a whole. This is why narrow-bodies's keep getting bigger of the years, to get further away from that 80-149 seat economic trough.

Outsourced flying is the only way to make a lot of RJ routes economical.

Little problem...the vast majority of the market for RJ's is in the US, the land of the big scope clause.

The problem is it takes hundreds, or many hundreds of production aircraft just to break even on the R&D cost of developing a new aircraft.

If you cut out most of the US market, and turn what you thought was a 1000 airplane production run into a 300 airplane run, you're not going to make any money. You'll be lucky to break even.

For example, the A380 with about 300 orders is billions of dollars in the hole and will never even begin to recover it's costs.

Time to break out the Q400 and ATR 600 orders! LOL

Aircraft design/manufacture is a decades long process. Pilot contracts are short term instruments, and given the history of pilots selling their souls for a few dollars, those airplanes will fly where ever the companies that buy them, want them. Never underestimate greed.

Yet at the moment the manufactures needed that cave it did not happen.

In this case, never underestimate the power of underestimation.

These aircraft aren't ready and proven yet, still unicorns. No airline will strike up a deal on that. If these planes really are 20% more efficient you can bet airlines will do whatever it takes to bring them out vs flying old tired taped up crappy RJs.

Modern airframes especially derivatives generally come in within 1% of spec. The performance is a known issue. All the major contracts are locked in until 2020. The fate of these airframes will be decided before that. I believe the Skywest purchase contracts have a scope out clause.

They can be flown at every mainline with impunity. :cool:

So what's their solution? Will they be forced to continue to make the current generation 175, to maintain their foothold in the US? To prevent Bombardier from taking advantage of the situation to their benefit?

If this does bring about the end of the larger rjs, how is it a bad thing? More mainline jobs are are always better than ANY jobs at a regional. If airlines have such hardons for big rjs, convince Boeing and Airbus to build some. That would eliminate any hesitation mainline pilots have about flying rjs. Wasn't the DC-9 about the same size as a Crj 900?

I remember when Boeing couldn't sell 757's if they were two for the price of one.

I could see a few years of "pause" but if aircraft under 76pax/86k don't exist, regionals won't have planes to fly and mainline will get a small bribe for a big scope gain to allow them. It would take some time, but look at the stages thusfar... 19 to 34, 34-44/50, 50-76(some cases 86-99, yet limited). If the biggest thing is a 900/175(current model)... new tech and market forces will create the storm of either raising scope or losing regional feed. What this article states is what many have known in the latest rounds of contracts- more mainline jobs. This is the equivalent of age 65 vs 60 for rj manufacturers after the pilots worked through it. For 5 years, stagnation and preservation, then a thrive.

Just my thoughts.

Major airline pilots aren't going to have a problem flying them on their certificate with their pilots, they welcome them. It's the airline company's that don't want them flown on their certificates. If they have to pay DC9/717 wages to fly an RJ at mainline, they are going to have to pay the same A scale rate at a regional. This single issue would be taken to binding arbitration at the next opportunity.

What opportunity would require the issue to go to binding arbitration?

There would be zero binding arbitration. That takes sections of legal law and proving beyond common sense. Look at any LCC vs a major in payrates on the -88 or -318/19/20/757. It capitalism. That's life. It goes both ways. The nlrb is a long shot at best at this point to say "airline abc pays 987 an hour and we get 123; and mgmt doesn't agree, yet we staff it..". Apples and oranges. Airline A has billions in profit, airline B is fighting a loss. That's a free economy. Airline A may be business people with a reliable schedule vs B, or flights every day vs once a week, or snacks vs a swipe, or bags, or; now I'm mad.

Lcc's make a profit. Majors make a bigger profit by many factors. The majors win by reliability, perks, and overall schedule. That's economy of scale, and the american way. It's also known as capitalism. Show up to win or be beaten. Thats life in a 5k race or life in general. If it makes you feel better, I got killed in my age group for a turkey trot and get to try again in st Jude. Life sucks, you pay taxes, then you die. Such is life. Either get onboard, or yell and scream all the way through. Your call, it's your time wasted.

Look big picture. Pick your path, and enjoy life. Thinking the govt will give you something is amazing, like social security for millennials. Sounds great, not happening as hoped. You create your own destiny, on your choices alone.

LOL exactly. That didn't even make sense.

When and if they ask us about it, I hope we simply say "you can't afford it" and walk out.

Not one more seat, not one more pound, not one more airframe. Let the regionals choke on their current fleet options. Not our problem. JetBlue flies the E190 at 10% less than their A320 pay. We can do the exact same thing for these pathetically sent to market "scope jets", or they can eat them. Whatever.

There will always be a market for efficient aircraft in all seat categories. The E2 in all flavors fills that need.

The next 25 years will not be quite like the past...and Delta, AAL, and UAL do not have a global monopoly on air transport.

Foreign carriers operate on different models, as do the LCCs.

Lots of variables to consider and lots of potential uses...

Besides, if large "regional jets" (kind of ironic, compared to the PAX capacity of early 737s) really are that great at saving $$$$, then the majors might just have to swallow their pride and operate them directly.

Just saw the MRJ flying around the other day here in the US...

There's only tens of billions of dollars at stake in all of this. My bet is something happens to allow them. Whether its clever engineering to get the weight down somehow, or pilot groups feeling like management offers them a deal the cannot refuse. Everybody has a price. I feel like managements haven't pushed as hard as they could have yet. A lot can happen in half a decade in this industry.

Yes, the DC-9-10 was roughly the same size as a CRJ9. It's a bit heavier, burns quite a bit more fuel, but passenger wise its about the same. There's a reason the scope limit is 86,000 lbs, any higher and you're in the DC-9-10 territory.

In the case of the MRJ it needs to happen yesterday. Skywest is supposed to take delivery in 2018. That means they need to get instructors into class in the spring and line pilots into class in the fall.
There is a scope compliant version however it is heavy for 69seats in a two class and not a improvement over current offerings.
With the smallest size geared turbofan available you really need the 90 seater to get the efficiency gains.

The clause is 86k pounds. The MRJ is 87.3K. They can probably shave that off pretty easy.

They could pay mainline pilots mainline pay. If not, I guess they won't want those tens of billions of dollars very badly.

If you take the standard version of the MRJ90 and put in two class with economy plus or whatever you want to call it and reduce the pax down, you could get it inside the weight requirement if re-certified. I'm not sure how difficult the actual re-certification would be but it's possible. With the normal 9 first class configuration you already see in the market, it would also be 81 seats. You could add more first or more economy plus but maybe that would ruin the RVSM. The E2 is supposedly way heavier than the MRJ. Something like 10000 lbs on MGTOW but I can't remember exactly. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

The short range version of the MRJ 90 is at 87.3. The MRJ 70 is less and meets scope. They tried to shave the weight. Wing failed and is being beefed up.

Easiest solution end the regionals and bring ALL flying back to mainline where it never should have left.

That's a great idea if you want to see an explosion of LCC. When mainline only serves major cities

Oh come on how do you know that?

They might be able to recertifify the short range version but the problem is it only goes like 1100nm. Maybe that's acceptable for RJs as it should be regional routes but it seems a bit low.

They have a monopoly on US hub-and-spoke, which is a very large market, I think larger than any other single global market niche.

For much the rest of the world, most airline flying is not a routine thing so customers don't care about frequency. One A380 per week is just fine, since it's cheaper per seat than say five daily NB/RJ flights, seven days/week.

The ones that have the kind of density that supports high-frequency RJ flying also tend to have a lot of high-speed rail (Japan & Western Europe).


They're not great at saving money, what they do is provide frequency which is important to the kind of habitual flyers we have in the US market. If operated by mainline, they would mostly lose money.

In the past operating RJ's at a loss was accepted and justified as feed for mainline hubs. Lately majors prefer that almost all of their flying turn a profit, but the pendulum could swing back.

But if the pilot shortage is real, then the other possible paradigm change would be reduced frequency, operating NB's on former RJ routes just not as often. PAX would not be happy if they had to take the one flight out of Podunk Falls at 0600 to connect to an international departure at 2230...

If Delta flies the ERJ-175 and pays DC9/717 wages, they are setting the new industry standard wages higher. So when a company like RAH goes into their next negotiating session and the issue of pay becomes a point where the parties cannot come to an agreement, industry standard pay becomes relevant to binding arbitration or an imposed settlement. What are you guys smokin?

Skyw could fly all 100 for Alaska right?
Please vote in scope Alaska if true.

You should be more concerned with E190-E2 and E195-E2 at Alaska

Also terrifying.