CRJ aircraft

[BEagle]

Have had the misfortune to fly on these damn things several times over the last 2 weeks - in what was alleged to be Business Class. CRJ200 flight on Eurowings last Wednesday from BHX-MUC was by far the worst...

Why is it that as people are getting generally bigger, they are being squeezed into these nasty little biz jets masquerading as airliners. Uncomfortable, lower standards of cabin service - but just as expensive as a real airliner when it comes to seat cost!

[Crepello]

Yep, I'd the 'pleasure' of three hours in a CL-65 recently. Fortunately, I'd an empty seat next to me, so could spread out a bit. Not everyone was so lucky.

Have flown on a few Avros/146s. Wasn't a big fan, till I flew one of Lufthansa's, 3+2 seating instead of the 3+3 I'd experienced. Big difference in comfort.

My armchair seems to be getting smaller too, but I suspect the problem mightn't be with the chair... ;)

[SLF]

Yeah, it's really not worth paying the extra for Business class. Suffer these regularly BHX=>CPH, although the catering improved a little when Duo took over the hardware from Maersk :)

The CRJ700 seems to have a little extra legroom, or is that my imagination?

[Sharjah Night Shift]

I tend to agree about the comfort on these CRJs.

Bring back the Viscount.

[BEagle]

The CRJ700 seems slightly less cramped than the wretched CRJ100/200....

I note that Lufthansa have announced that, from today they will be keeping the middle seats on all their biz class flights empty in Europe and within Germany. That'll be fine - but they can hardly do that on the 2+2 CRJs.

If only they'd put real airliners on all routes from BHX! Strange that you get an old B737 to FRA, but on the longer flights to MUC you get one of these damn CRJs. Plus the joy of being jolted around the airports in buses between the remote spots they use for these things and the terminals :mad:

How do LH think that their expensive passengers will continue to tolerate being squeezed into these blasted things when low-cost travel with EasyJet or RyanAir provides more comfort.........

[Avman]

I'm with Sharjah , bring back the Viscount! Yeah CRJs are an absolute pain for any sectors longer than 5 minutes! And paying for C class on these must surely contravene the trade descriptions act.

[MarkD]

wot about those 705s (900s with 75 seats)? Might be more comfy. How does cabin compare to ERJ (never having been on either)

[Ace Rimmer]

The apparent improvement in comfort in CRJ700 vs the 100/200 is no illusion Bombardier dropped the floor an inch or so on the 7/900 which brigs the widest part of the cabin to (the avereage person's) shoulder height - also means you don't have to squiz down to look out the window.. Actually if you get an A set (the 145 is three abreast) I reckon it's the more comfortable of the two punter wise. But wait till you ride an Embraer 170/190. These puppies will knock every thing else including many mainline types into a cocked hat on pax comfort.

[West Coast]

I would rather ride a RJ and have a window or aisle than sit in the middle on a larger acft.
The 700 is an improvement. I was in the back of one a few weeks ago. While the little RJ is lackluster in perf, the 700 put me back in my seat and climbed initially like a 757.

[BEagle]

2+2 Business Class seating in a 'proper' airliner would require a 48" double with a 19" aisle, a total of 115" or 2.92m. Such seats should be pitched at 40".

2+2 Economy Class seating would require a 41.5" double with a 19" aisle, a total of 102" or 2.59m. Such seats should be pitched at 32".

The CRJ700 has a seat pitch of 31" and a cabin width of 2.57m, the CRJ100/200 has a cabin width of 2.49m.

This means that the best you'll ever get in a CRJ is a cabin which dimensionally offers seating slightly more cramped than normal economy. That means Economy Class seating at Business Class prices - which I think is unreasonable.

Put it another way - to fit 48" Business Class seating in a CRJ700 you'd need a 5.2" aisle......or in a CRJ100/200 a 2" aisle.

The EMB-145 has a 2.10" cabin. With a 19" aisle you could fit 'normal' 2+1 Economy Class seats, but the A seat has more space as there's no B or C seat. Shave a bit off the aisle width and everyone gets more comfortable seating than they do in any CRJ!

[Unwell_Raptor]

Sorry, Beagle, any chance you could edit to be all inches or all metres? It's a bit much for us older chaps to grasp.

[BEagle]

OK - shall use inches:

For 2+2 Business Class, seating should be 48+19+48=115".

For 2+2 Economy Class, seating should be 41.5+19+41.5=102"

CRJ700 cabin width is 101"
CRJ100/200 cabin width is 98"

It's therefore impossible to offer Business Class comfort in any 2+2 configured CRJ. But such seats are sold as 'Business Class' whereas they are, in fact, no better than Economy Class. Sure you get a better level of cabin service in Business Class, but let's look at a simple case:

You are a Birmingham-based businessman who needs to be at a meeting first thing in the morning in Munich on 15 Apr. So you decide to travel out the previous evening and have a flexible ticket as you're not sure when the meeting will end. You decide to book on-line with Lufthansa.

Flexible Economy Class price is £635.40, Flexible Business Class with eaxctly the same seat comfort is £779.40. £144 is a lot to pay for use of the lounges, 1000 extra Miles and More miles, a cold meal outbound and a hot one inbound plus maybe 2 glasses of wine more than than the one you get to acompany the Economy Class sandwiches! That's my complaint- people are being really ripped off travelling in CRJs in 'Business Class'!! Same goes for travelling 'Business Class' in the ATR42/72, incidentally.

[Ace Rimmer]

West Coast: Yep the 700 has much better performance compared with the 100/200 this is thanks to the uprated -8C1 engines and the redesign of the wing which included the addition of slats. Basically 700s can operate into aiports where you really wouldn't want to take a 200 - Aspen and Key West are prime examples.
The 900 on the other hand despite the 8C5 engines has the same wings as the 700 so has a less sparkling performance. Actually, the handling of the 700/900 is very similar (the front office is identical except when the door page is pulled up ion the ECAS - the 900 has two over wing exits), the 700 tends to float a little more in the flare but you'd expect that (lower wing loading than the 900). On the other hand my experience of the two is very limited so that may be a false impression.

[BEagle]

Yes, I'm sure that they're great to fly and ideal for the places you mention. But as substitute airliners for trips between major European airports, they don't offer sufficient comfort to Business Class travellers to justify the high costs being charged...

2+1 seating with 24" seats at 40" pitch would be a totally different matter though......

[A340_rulez]

Well i have flown on A lufthansa CRJ 100/200 in economy class and i found them extremely comfortable with adequate space.
I really like them but then that is just my opinion!

[BEagle]

Very likely - I agree that they're fine for Economy Class as they're more or less the same dimensionally as normal airliner Economy Class without the horrid 'middle seat'!

But there is no real excuse for the £144 premium charged in Business Class - you simply don't get anything extra to merit such a price!

[AFFF]

BEagle

Can see your point about being ripped off. Lufthansa Cityline, who operate the CRJ's under LH flight numbers, operated what they called City Class up until a couple of years ago, and I assume they still do. Whilst not being a full blown Business service, it was a vast improvement on mainstream LH economy class for service if not comfort.

Maybe the answer is for the airline, or agent selling the ticket to be a little more open, and inform you at the time of booking that this flight does not provide a business class. (No chance!)

The other answer is to do a little research, maybe read the timetable. LH flight numbers starting with the number 5 (eg LH5***) can generally be assumed to be LH Cityline flights and it would be pointless to buy a business ticket, as that class is not provided. The down side comes when you have bought an economy ticket for a Cityline flight, and a last minute equipment change puts a mainstream LH aircraft on the flight, as has happened to me on more than one occasion.

AFFF

[BEagle]

Both Cityline and Eurowings come under the new 'Lufthansa Regional' umbrella - and both market their non-Economy Class seats as 'Business Class'. Which clearly it isn't!

I now have a close look at the LH timetables and avoid flights between MUC and BHX if I can!

[Final 3 Greens]

BEagle

I don't know which other airlines you fly on, but LH and BA both offer 34" seat pitch in C (biz Europe) and a lot more in J (world biz class), with 31" in Y.

The CRJ is a nasty little aeroplane though, I find the EMB 145 much nicer, agree with other posters who talk about the advantage of the single seat in the A position.

Ultimately, I guess that the airlines like them becuase they are money making machines on thin routes.

[BEagle]

I normally fly Star Alliance by choice - and the biz class seating is fine in everything except the CRJ!

'Thin' routes? With more people discovering how much easier BHX is than that dump called LHR T2, load factors are pretty high on all the BHX - Germany flights I've been on of late!

[Final 3 Greens]

Full load on a CRJ is a light load on a 73' or 319.

Thin in the sense of mainline kit - e.g. you hike down to TLS on an Avro ;)

[MarkD]

maybe Bombardier should make a "CRJ500" with a 700/900 fuselage but less some frames... although I seem to remember a CRJ replacement is being planned? anyone?

wasn't the early CRJ merely a Challenger refit?

[Ace Rimmer]

MarkD
Yep, the 100/200 is a stretch of the 604
There is a CRJ440 - which is a standard 200 with 44 seats rather than 50 so you get a bit more pitch and a closet (it's so scope restricted airlines can have more RJs)
Then there's the CRJ700-705 which is a 900 with 70 seats in - again a scope monster.

I doubt there's much mileage in Bomb doing anything about a CRJ replacement - the cost of development would be prohibitive espacially against a background where you have a decent backlog of 50 seat orders and new orders for 50-seat RJs are on the wane - these days the big orders are for 70-110 seat offereings...in other words the big Embraers.
I suspect that Bomb are regretting binning the BRJ programme but they say these days that they will only develop a big RJ if they can produce a product that "significantly" reduces operating cost compared with the 170/190 - at least that's what Ridolfi tells me every time I ask him...

[matblack]

I have to say that I quite enjoy flying in the CRJ. I used it a few times MAN-HAMBURG and found seat comfort ok for the short trip. I really enjoy the climb rate on this thing. It seems to go straight up and level off at crusie height in no time. It's much better than the EMB that I regularly use on the MAN-CPH route.

[BEagle]

Well, I've decided to delay my next trip back to the UK from Dresden so that I fly via FRA and come back in a 737 instead of the earlier flight via MUC which would have been bus - CRJ - bus....

Even better news is that there'll be an A300-600 flight back on my subsequent flight a week or so later! The luxury of being back in a wide-body again! Vastly better than the CRJ experience in every respect!!

[Final 3 Greens]

BEagle

Make sure that you get an outer (window or aisle seat) in C on the 300-600, as LH cram 4 in to the middle, like Y in a 747 - pretty naf IMHO.

[BEagle]

Thanks for the heads-up, but according to the LH website http://europe.lufthansa-business-class.de/uk/index.php?ref=2_0_platz.php , they'll only be offering window and aisle seats in European C even on the A300.....

Another good reason to avoid the blasted CRJs - as far as LH Regional is concerned, only their RJ85s and BAe146s are included!

[Xenia]

I used to love to work in the CRJ :O
... The B767 now is more comfortable without any doubt ... but then ... again ... does size really matter??? :E

[Final 3 Greens]

BEagle

You're more on the ball than I - haven't flown LH this year, but this sounds like a good move.

Xenia

Depends what you want ;)

[Liftdumper]

I believe the CRJ is quite comfortable in economy.

And it's not the cashcow people on this topic think. The trend (Star Alliance-Austrian) is to use a Dash8-400 prop(!) on routes which are usually flown by CRJ.
For example VIE-AMS or VIE-CPH with a prop. It's comfartabe regarding seat pitch, but take into account the much lower speed.

Both aircraft have the same costs on those routes, with twenty seats more on the Dash8.

I think the company here doesn't really understand its customers.

[Curious Pax]

Xenia,
You started a long thread in the Agony Aunt Forum some time ago where you made it very clear that size did indeed matter!!
It was too small!! (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=76327)
Marge had to close it in the end as it was even making her blush!!

[MarkD]

Today's Toronto Star mentioned in passing a putative $2bn to develop a new RJ for Bombardier. No other details.

[BEagle]

Hope that they'll NB that the cabin needs to be about 12" wider if they intend to offer 'business class' with a 2+2 layout!

Have decided to delay my return from Germany next week by 2 hours - just to ensure that I don't have to travel in a CRJ!

[PaperTiger]

Yes, Bombardier is in a quandary. Their Challenger-based tubes are at a dead end as far as further RJ development goes and having eschewed the (Shorts) RJX a few years back they are now faced with coming up with a completely new design. $2bn to do that sounds low to me.

Embraer has raised the bar with the 170/190 and even if Bombardier does decide to compete, they will be at least 3 years behind in the market. Only chance is to leapfrog Embraer and come up with something substantially more efficient and user-friendly for which the airlines would be willing to wait. Don't see it myself, I think they'll retrench into the bizjet sphere, after all the whole CRJ thing was a very happy bit of serendipity - stretching the Challenger just when the market was right (although it was 2-3 years before it really took off).