I second Ron's remarks, probably making me the shorter, fatter ron. I was a frequent flyer on those same routes, probably on the same flights, typically 2 return trips per week (sometimes more). It had replaced a 29 seat Jetstream 41 (uncomfortable and poor despatch reliability) which had itself replaced a pair of Jetstream 31s (a comfortable 12-seater and a less comfortable 18 seater).
Being very much a fatteron the seats could be a little constraining, but were tolerable for the 45-minute (IIRC) flight, and the aeroplane had a nice-enough ride. It was no less or more comfortable than the 146 which replaced it, and was much MORE comfortable than the execrable Embraer 145 which has since replaced the 146. The 145 was (I suspect) only designed to carry consignments of deaf dwarfs to the battles of middle earth, and only then under general aesthetic. Flying in the 145 is preferable to having your arms and legs chewed off by zombies, but only marginally.
I'm told that as a commercial proposition one of it's main problems is that the wing was "half a frame out", which is to say that in its final form the CG came out wrong. It needed either to move the wing half a frame (not possible because there was nothing to mount it on) or increase the size of the tailplane (not affordable). As a result it needed to carry nose ballast when empty, and was always loaded from the front to the back. In our use if the aeroplane was flying half full then the cabin crew would fold forward the seat backs of the rearmost third of the seats before boarding the pax. There are many tales of regular runs like taking children from the channel islands to/from boarding schools on the mainland at the beginning/end of term where you could more or less guarantee one leg would be empty, so at the end of term they'd carry a standard bit of ballast which they'd offload and leave at the airport, ready to pick up again on the return flight at the beginning of the next term. That sort of CG sensitivity just adds the extra "faffing factor" which operators hate.
Do I remember that BIA operated a bunch of them, or did I make that up?
PDR