Regional jet
SN Brussels Airlines Avro RJ85 regional jet
A regional jet (RJ) is a small short-range jet aircraft that is intended to fly passengers from smaller airports to larger ones, thereby "feeding" the larger hubs with passengers. The term feederliner is nearly synonymous, but allows also propeller aircraft.
In the early days of the hub-and-spoke model of airline operations in the immediate post-WWII era, a huge number of war-surplus DC-3's were available at very low costs, so while a number of designs with much better operational costs were available, it wasn't until the mid to late 1950s that airlines were looking for newer aircraft. At this point many of these DC-3's were becoming too expensive too expensive to maintain for passenger use. Many of these were passed on to freight operations while a series of turboprop aircraft took over their market, the Vickers Viscount being one particularly successful example.
Beginning in the early 1960's, commercial air passengers began traveling on jet-powered aircraft with seating capacity from about 70 passengers to over 300.
While these new jet-powered aircraft were a great stride forward and were popular in comparison to propellor aircraft, some of these jet aircraft were too large to be economical on shorter routes or on routes between smaller communities and the "mega-hubs" of the major carriers.
In the 1980s the earlier generation of aircraft started to become too expensive to maintain, necessitating the introduction of new generation of short-range aircraft. de Havilland Canada was in a particularly good position at this point, having just introduced a new aircraft with very low operational costs, the de Havilland Canada Dash 8, which soon took over a good portion of the market. Competition in the form of the ATR-42 and ATR-72 from the Avion de Transport RÃÂégional consortium, and the Saab 340 were introduced as well, resulting in the market saturating in a very short time once the earlier designs were replaced. Today only the DASH-8 continues in production, albeit a much larger version.
Many air passengers dislike propeller aircraft because such airplanes are slower than jets, have significantly reduced comfort and power in most cases, and may lack a flight attendant and on-board lavatory. Yet airlines, conscious of their need to survive economically and provide a financial return to their stockholders, promoted the use of small propellor commuter planes on routes extending to smaller cities.
What was needed was a small jet aircraft to fill the niche. The first successful design was the Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) (CL 600) in the early 1990s, which soon started replacing almost all other designs. The CRJ's range is enough to fill mid-range routes as well, routes previously served by larger aircraft such as the Boeing 737 and DC-9. The aircraft are so inexpensive to operate that they are increasingly being used for direct airport-to-airport flights, bypassing the whole hub-and-spoke design entirely, and causing a minor revolution in airline operations.
The CRJ was quickly joined by the Embraer EMB-145 and the two designs have since been in competition, with some highly charged political wrangling as a result. Fairchild Dornier introduced the 328JET to compete, but went bankrupt soon afterwards. A fourth design from a consortium of Sukhoi, Ilyushin, and Boeing never materialized, and a Fokker-ERNO design ended when Fokker went bankrupt before the design was finalized.
RJ's in current service were not the first small jet passenger aircraft. The YAK-40, a three-engine aircraft of Soviet design, carried up to 40 passengers from its inception in the early 1970's; however, no YAK-40 aircraft ever flew in scheduled service in continental North America. Fokker, a Dutch-based aircraft manufacturer, built the Fokker F-28 jet aircraft, powered by two rear-mounted engines. The F-28 could carry up to 65 or 75 passengers in its various sizes. Fokker's F-28 aircraft saw service with several North American carriers, including Piedmont Airlines and Horizon Air, a subsidiary of Alaska Airlines. Neither of these early entrants into the regional market is being built today, and no scheduled U.S. airline uses the F-28 for passenger service at this time.
As the popularity of regional jets continues to grow with airlines, larger variants of these aircraft can be expected. These larger variants will blur the line between RJ's and traditional "full-size" jet aircraft. As an example, the original DC-9 jet aircraft were designed to seat approximately 75 passengers. RJ's have a ready market with airlines who appreciate their lower acquisition and operating costs.
Feederliners are typically flown by the regional airline offshoots of the larger international airlines. Since the majority of the price of a ticket is in the longer-range portions of the flight, regional jets need to be as cost-effective as possible. An aircraft's lifetime cost is a combination of three factors, the purchase price, maintenance costs, and operational costs such as fuel use. If the regional jet's ticket between two smaller airports costs even close to that between two major hubs, the passengers will simply drive instead.
Seating on RJ's tends to be narrow and tight, and passengers typically are restricted from bringing on board carry-on items which would fit without difficulty in the overhead bins of larger aircraft. While designed primarily as feeder aircraft, these RJ's may now be found flying major trunk routes alongside traditional larger jet aircraft on routings including Dallas/Ft. Worth to Oakland, CA; Atlanta to Houston; and Cleveland to Newark. RJ's allow airlines to open new "long, thin" routings with jet equipment which heretofore did not exist, such as Atlanta to Monterrey, Mexico. RJ's have also meant a return to jet service to cities where full-size jets had departed over a decade ago, such as Macon, Georgia.
History
Features
List of regional airliners