OK guys, lets be quite honest about this. The 145 is a cheap Brazilian budget jet, originally designed for the American market with their unlimited runways..... the Trabant ( I was going to say Skoda) of the aviation world.
It has achieved a popularity amongst aviation bean counters because it is just so cheap and can offer the illusion of jet comfort to a public who in many cases would probably be better and more comfortably served by something like a Dash 8 Q400. It is in short a con.
Its "Budget" features as in the CX fleet include:-
No cat 111 capability.
No autoland capability.
No autothrottles
No reversers
Rubbish radar (As a result, frequent lightning strikes and turbulence enounters)
General Aviation type FMS installations which are highly deficient in some respects (VNAV for example) and contain first generation processors which are far behind the capacity of more appropriate bespoke commercial designs.
A performance envelope stretched to the limit, with ambitious European routes beyond its capabilities (with a full pax load anyway)
Inadequate passenger room, let alone space for anything other than a briefcase and terrible headroom.
From an operational point of view it is skittish and unstable and requires a disproportionate amount of pilot skill to land it in difficult conditions.
As for BACX providing a "Club" service in it.....that is the greatest P$££ take of the lot.
I am personally surprised that there have not been more incidents arising from these bean counter induced deficiences and would not be the slightest bit surprised if what happened to this crew could have happened to anyone else unfortunate enough to have been flying it that day in those conditions.