United Unveils 41-Seat CRJ-450s, With First Class, Closets, And Starlink Wi-Fi

I can see some logic here. As an example I have family in Akron, which right now receives the dreaded CRJ2 from United. Ok it's not the most premium market. But on connections to other short flights thru Chicago, nobody is going to book First. On longer flights, United will need to offer cheaper fares than American, who fly CRJ7/9s with First to Akron. There's also more motivation right now for locals to have status with American over United because of the first class availability.
Now apply this logic to another 50 destinations, and United probably see the potential to make more money with the premium cabins, compete better with American or Delta in a few markets, and earn more thu Mileage Plus in the long run. Can see this working out

This will attract small town frequent flyers to be royal to UA. Nice upgrade odds and now with Y+ (wiki says 16 seats or 4 rows of economy plus planned)

You’d be surprised with the amount of premium traffic that connects into the long haul Polaris markets from these smaller cities. Plus this was years in the making that precedes the ORD turf war.

Wish they'd also kept the overhead up-front, because there's often backpacks and other items, which could be stored up there.

Skywest has 105 CRJ-200s that are 20-25 years old and 65 of which have been in storage so they want to squeeze the last bits of value from them. UA wants to be able to offer a 'premium' end-to-end product to high-yield customers in small spoke cities. UA obviously believes this type of things work as they have plenty of CRJ-550 data and they have steadily increased the number of those over the last seven years.

Yes I could see that, and it also just generally fits with the increased regional frequencies UA is adding from ORD to various small/mid-sized Midwestern cities (I wouldn't be surprised if we see a little bit of increased regional frequencies out of DEN at some point too). If you're going to fly a few times daily to places like Springfield or Grand Rapids, in each case connecting to/from a bank of mainline flights at ORD, this would be the logical plane to use.

The issue is scope clauses, fo which United has the most strict one limiting the amount of specific regional aircraft, but with no limit on 50 seaters, and I’m assuming there’s just so many CRJ-700s they can get a hold of, while still trying to keep that push towards going all 0 on single class aircraft like delta

I'm sure some of the load data shows that they don't fly with near 50 pax for various factors outside of pure demand. Weight and balance are often factors on these planes. And they are not only used on super short and skinny. They do fly these supplemented with mainline A320s on ORD-CMH as an example.

Either way, for a normie passenger that doesn't care about yields or industry specifics, it will be a big improvement.

UA & DL pilots have the exact same scope on 70/76 seat RJs. UA has chosen not to buy the small narrow body mainline aircraft like A220s like DL did that would allow more UAX 76 seat RJs.

The ERJ-145 is the worst RJ.

I wonder if they’ll do the same thing with the ERJ-145 fleet? I’ve read before that these are often payload limited to less than 50 pax, so it could be a useful way to extract more revenue per flight.

V/F

This article's pictures do not show it but there's a cabinet on top of the carryone storage (for the 7 pax) that will fit most of the back packs, only Row 1 will require w no underseat storage...

Looks like a nice conversion for a previously uncomfortable experience.

And the Flight Attendants will stand around chit chatting, while Economy passengers fill up the Business luggage rack. You can see this all the time. US Airlines are way to passive about preserving the slight advantages of their Business Class (like the endless stream of people running up front to use the facilities). And don't say it can't be done, Asian airlines do a great job of keeping people in their assigned cabin.

Perhaps to grab some of the college sports team charter flying?

Will they operate with one F/A as most CRJ-200s do now? 7 F seats on a short flight is a lot for one person to handle, much less provide service in Y cabin.

The planes are ancient and burn lots of fuel, not good in a high cost environment.

I think you underestimate the number of people that come from small cities to a hub that are flying international business. I can’t count the number of times that the end of my trip is on a CRJ with no domestic first class. It’s always a downer that the final hour of my what is sometimes a 48+ hour journey ends on a tiny regional jet.

If I had the choice between ending my long haul journey or starting it with a carrier that had a domestic 1st product vs none I’m gonna pick the one with a 1st class product.

I wonder if there will be enough closet space for peoples stuff. I wonder how people would feel about their stuff not being near them.

I don’t get it…. a shoe box is a shoe box regardless of its designation. This rebranding makes little to no sense to me, sorry.

The statement that "these very small regional jets aren’t operating in premium markets with a significant amount of first class demand, or in markets where there’s a lot of competition" is particularly ignorant. Take my usual regional airport as an example -- multiple departures per day by each of the big 3 across 5 hubs, yet crucially ALL RJ-operater. One can't see the premium demand if the premium supply is otherwise non-existent. And these RJ flights that do have "First" up front --- always full. Competition on the margin for these sort of cities is even more intense given nearly all customers must connect down route and may choose between multiple carriers each offering multiple itineraries.

@ Adam -- That comment is specific to the CRJ-200, not the CRJ-700 or CRJ-900.

Looks like a major improvement overall, but tall people in the back are going to be hurting - there's not much headroom back there even with the small overhead bins...