Taken from Wednesday's Aviation News:
Now many may disagree, including Flybe, but the fact is that Flybe, Europe’s largest regional airline has seen its mission economics destroyed by the introduction of the Embraer into the fleet. Flybe and others might argue that the Q400 just was not reliable enough and they had to act, this is true but as it has turned out the airline should have moved for the ATR72.
With more than five regional jet manufacturers in the market, it is clear that someone somewhere is going to lose out in a major way. For Flybe it is clear that they need to either re-organise and re-focus or re-fleet. See Airline Economics issue 13 for a full data lead story in conjunction with ch-aviation on the plight of the regional sector.
I assume that the reference to the "Embraer" is to the 175 rather than the 195 but since I was told that the deal negotiated with Embraer meant that the
aircraft-mile costs of the 175 were close to those of the Q400 and, therefore seat-mile costs were considerably lower, I wonder if this has been borne out in practice i.e. whether the 175 is turning once profitable Q400 routes into losses?