Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Boeing doesn't have a real business plan until they have a plan to replace the 737. Boeing and Airbus have been going crazy over the past 30 years developing widebody airliners, some of which were solidly rejected by the market, but domestic flyers (most of them) are stuck with a 1967 design. It's a disaster when it comes to managing the social and environmental impacts of air travel.

A ride in this plane

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E-Jet_family

radically changed my view of what is possible in a small airliner, because it has a squared-off cross section it feels much larger on the inside than a 737... And this is a previous generation plane, now there is

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E-Jet_E2_family

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220

There's a crisis brewing at America's small airports in that they've really stopped building the sub-50 seat regional jets that serve smaller airports. (In the small city near me, almost every organization lists the local airport as a weakness in a SWOT analysis) Manufacturers know that airliners around 70 seats would be dramatically lower cost to operate than the status quo, enough that prices would drop and service quality would increase and filling the extra seats would be easy. Trouble is the unions won't let the airlines upgrade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_clause

Yes! I rode in an E195 recently and I was kinda dreading it because it's a much smaller plane than a 737. I was so pleasantly surprised how roomy the cabin was. And how quiet and convenient. There was even a little holder for my tablet.

It is quieter for folks on the ground too. And it doesn’t get grounded when the temperature is too high nearly as much as the 737.

If people realized you could get widebody comfort in a regional jet they’d quit flying on legacy airlines.

Is it more expensive? Where do you search for these flights?

Delta has some A220s, I got put on an E-Jet on an American from Philadelphia to Montreal.

In my case it was not more expensive, no. But I was flying in Europe. Not sure about the US.

They just use them for the quieter flights where they have trouble filling up a 737.

I was dreading it because the last time I flew on an airliner this size it was a 717 and it was horrible. Very noisy in particular (I was seated right beside the engine I have to say). The Embraer was really delightful and it has under-wing engines.

Here in the US basically all the regional airlines use them. Horizon Airlines is one that I know of specifically, and Wikipedia lists Sky West, Envoy Air, Mesa Airlines, Republic Airways, JetBlue, etc, etc. Many of them contract for the more well–known airlines like Delta, US Airways, and so on, so you could end up on an Embraer even if you don’t seek it out.

A lot of those are the smaller and older regional jets like

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_ERJ_family

which personally I like less than

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Canada_Dash_8

The newer and larger E-Jets are on a whole different level in terms of comfort.

The A220 / CSeries is another great example of the corruption that exists between Boeing and the US government. Locking out new competitors via dubious anti-dumping petitions.

Seems to me the solution to the union problem would be some kind of direct deal with the union on outsourcing rather than a workaround based on staff rules relating to seat numbers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com