American Airlines Places Order For 30 Regional Jets

as tiny of a difference it is from a pax comfort perspective between E75 and E90, the E75 is still flown by regionals, so when IRROPS rears its ugly head, the 3 majors always first throw the regionals under the bus to protect their own on-time figures.

(chalk it to some pilot union geniuses to put the SCOPE cut-off point RIGHT in the middle of a product line)

and yes, i agree the CS100 is an amazing ride (did it once on LX VCE-ZRH). too bad we won't be seeing them in either AA or UA colors anytime soon

My thoughts are quite self centered.

I fly DCA-BOS with some regularity, and am Lifetime Platinum. Now that 319's have only 8 F seats, I can forget upgrades as there are well enough folks with higher status or who pay for F on a 319.

12 F seats on a much smaller E90 pushes me up the upgrade list dramatically, and I do better than 50/50 on those flights.

I avoid the AA 319 whenever possible due to the limited First Class upgrade opportunities, and I'm Executive Platinum. When I see an E75 or E90 outside my gate, I'm a happy passenger knowing it has lots of room and my roller board will fit nicely in the overhead bins.

If the E175 and CRJ900 are so similar, why would they not just order one plane type?

True, the E175 is superior - windows, overhead bins - but CRJ900 is A OK. i commute on regionals, CRJs, so long ago got a RIMOWA wheelie hard bag that just fits in the overhead even on a CRJ200. Anything to replace CRJ200s i'm all for. these 76 seat jets w/ first and prem econ spacing are A OK for smaller jets.

@Lucky Do you want to acknowledge that you mixed up two different incidents in your post about AC incident at SFO, and hopefully clarify your post?

A reader (Ian) wrote a comment on your post about AC incident at SFO and reminded you about this mix up, but you don't seem to care.

@Miz, wrong post. Also Lucky already acknowledged mix up and corrected.

I can't believe that airlines still order the CRJ. The EMB is so so much better.

I prefer the CRJ over the ERJ. Cant help but feel the ERJ 170/175s are wobbly in the air and move along more axes than other airplanes if in bumpy air. Also not sure how the statement could be made that ERJ´s are quiter than CRJ´s... Wouldnt agree.

@ Henry LAX

“chalk it to some pilot union geniuses to put the SCOPE cut-off point RIGHT in the middle of a product line”

I’m curious why we shouldn’t also chalk it up to some moronic airline managers who *agreed* to such a point?

Or are managers just utterly powerless / cowardly in the face of the strong and fearless unions?

I mean, shouldn’t we be giving credit where it’s due, and all?

As someone else already said, anything to replace the CRJ200's is fine in my book! Out of CMH, if I'm not flying SWA, it's likely I'm flying on an RJ.

@callum

The way they've structured their ops.
CRJ7/9 either share certifications with the CRJ200, or are just a quick course, not sure, ergo, saves costs.

PSA is a CRJ2/7/9 operator exclusively. PSA will eventually receive all the CRJ700s Envoy has.
Envoy will be an ERJ-145 / E-175 operator exclusively, shedding all 700 ops to PSA, not sure if they will transfer all or just most 140/145 to Piedmont (in house), ExpressJet, and Trans States.

There are other things that come into play due to regional consolidation, but mainly, makes little sense to have mixed fleets, so an airline that already has CRJ200s has little incentive to choose the 175 over the 900.

IIRC, Envoy wasn't even supposed to get 175s from the original order, except that Republic couldn't staff them, so AA gave them to Envoy (Compass also got 20).

@Felipe - Ah thanks, that makes perfect sense.

@Henry LAX

You could put the scope clause at 120 and people will complain it's in the middle of the C Series.

76 works out just fine as it's right at the upper end of regionals. The E190 ends up having a seat count about the same as the DC-9, so I don't see where the problem is.

There was also a scope clause (I believe it was at AA) that forbade regionals for flying planes bigger than 50 seats (even if they were flown for other carriers), so Chautauqua got sued because they flew 170s on behalf of Delta, and as a result, they had to transfer those to the then dormant Shuttle America certificate.

There was also one that put limits on 50 seaters, leading to the ERJ-140 and the CRJ-440 (a 200 with a 44 seat cap -on paper only)

Delta's contract also limits how many planes per capacity, so there is a hard cap on how many 50, 69, 76 seaters. This is back again, now that SkyWest has some E-175LL (starting at N262SY -if anyone is curious), which are 175s paper-capped at 69, but that can be recertified to seat 76 if the market changes, or if the planes want to be sold.

There's also the scope clause that forbids regionals flying for one carrier (Delta?) from having planes bigger than 76, so the 80-seat 175s that Republic flew for US Airways (N101HQ-N138HQ) had to have one row taken out so they would seat 76 and stay within the limits, while they waited interior mods and a layout that matched the layout on all other AA 175s.

None of this matters anyway, because right now, the 2nd gen 69/76 seat regionals are above scope clause MTOW, so the MRJ and E2 cannot be flown by US regionals until changes are made to the contract.

This really does not make any sense at all.

The C100 is larger and carries more passengers. There are only 2 pilots and the differential is only a total of $300 PER HOUR OF FLIGHT.

With 100 passengers that's $3 per hour of flight.

I'll bet the C100 is still selling at a big discount. And is more fuel efficient.

This is so short sighted - makes one remember the board that only can think in small numbers discussing for hours the cost of pencils and writing off millions of dollars in purchases in minutes. You only debate the level you are familiar with and this is a totally dumb or political decision. Do I smell a Trump in the background of this decision?

@Azamaraal

C100 is scope claused. Regionals cannot go over 76 seats, the CS would have to be mainline, and we know how AA feels about mainline 100 seaters (E190 retirement starts next year).

Where does Trump come in? CRJ is Canadian, E-175 is Brazilian. I suppose we can blame him for Chernobyl while we're at it.

If these are replacing the smaller regional jets, then this is a GREAT move. I love both the E-175 and CRJ900, both in Y and F.

@Felipe

How soon we forget? Who was the idiot who wanted to add a 300% surcharge to the C100/300 to be delivered to Delta? I think his name was trump. He got trumped by your trade organizations even though Boeing was trying to shut Bombardier down.