What do you guys think?
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Seems a bit odd to offer so many first class seats, if at all, for a regional jet.
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This would probably be a bit overweight for a CRJ, due to the first class seats
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I think it actually makes sense. Skinny business oriented routes absolutely exist, and this seems like the perfect plane to serve them on. A lot is US travelers are business oriented, so I think a premium product for a short skinny route is going to be a big hit, Iām surprised this idea hasnāt been implemented in mass yetā¦
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Also with a 1-2 fc seat configuration, business couples can travel together.
Sure, thereās definitely a market for business travelers, but thatās typically for longer flights. Do you really think even business travelers would spend double the price for a 20 minute flight? Who knows.
It probably wouldnāt be a money maker for airlines, because most people would fly premium/economy and not first, so there would just be empty seats
Na, a 50 seat plane.
I donāt really understand the whole ānew planeā thing. This is literally a CRJ-700 with a re-configured cabin. From the outside, you wouldnāt even be able to tell this ā550ā apart from the -700.
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The place is certified with the FAA as a CRJ-700. This is just a different configuration meant for connection between larger cities and smaller cities with a lot of business travel. Most recently, I saw one of these flying STL-ORD, which are two decently sized cities.
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@DylanHK, and @Joeavatar7, if your flying a 20 min flight instead of driving money is probably not a huge object. But this can actually be used on longer flights than a normal CRJ-700 I asume becuais of the reduced weight, so once you look at a 3 hour flight whare before you only had a regular RJ, or were facing one or more stop overs, it is going to start to be a good option for a lot of people I think, definitely enough to make it worth it. Iām sure United has ran the numbers and figured out what routes this is profitable on, and I donāt have that info, but this is in no way intended to replace every CRJ-700, just to offer a premium product of smaller flights (both time, and capacity wise) whare that makes senseā¦
Basically, this is Unitedās move to increase premium capacity. This came with the announcement of the 46 business class seat and 22 premium economy seat 767-300ER.
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The self serve thing is interesting, I guess thatās just so they can give this plane to there regional partners and not really have to worry about having first class level flight attendants?? š¤·š»āāļø
Will need to read againā¦ but thereās a chance this aircraft might be operated with one flight attendant only? Or at least one in each cabinā¦
Truthfully, not sure if that goes against regulationsā¦ I feel like Iāve flown on an ERJ or something that only had one FA.
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I mean if you have ten on a triple 7 your working out to a similar passenger to FA ratio as one, so two would be plenty I thinkā¦
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I believe that there is one flight attendant need for every 50 people. I could be wrong, but Iām thinking that there will be one flight attendant.
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I donāt know about 20-minute flights, but United will fly the CRJ-550 on Chicago OāHare to Bentonville (XNA) which is a rather high business destination becauseā¦ Wal-Mart. The route is around 1 hour and 15 minutes long.
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Even PIT to NYC which I have no idea if it will ever see this aircraft is a pretty par for the course RJ flight, short, and high frequency. But still 45 mins. There is also probably a fair amount of business travel on that route, but we do have seasonal mainline service, which would probably make a product like this a bit redundantā¦