Embraer Revisited. . . My Bad

Well it seems that in my haste to wrap up the regional jets, I skipped Embraer's other line of regionals, the ERJs. Although certainly less impressive than their E-Jet relatives, the ERJ 145 family of aircraft is nevertheless an important member of the global regional fleet.

The ERJ 135/140/145 are very small turbofan powered regionals that actually fill the niche below the Bombardier CRJ100/200 that was mentioned in the previous post. The 145 family was developed starting with the largest version, the ERJ 145. It first flew in 1995 (in its final design; it originally flew in 1989 but was deemed unsatisfactory and was redesigned) with a passenger capacity of 50. As a side-note that I found interesting, the ERJ 145 was designed from Embraer's turboprop, the EMB 120. Although the ERJ 145 that first flew in 1995 was quite different, it shares the same seating arrangement, range, and T-tail arrangement. To my knowledge, it is rare for a turbofan/jet aircraft to be derived from an existant turboprop airframe (please correct me if I'm wrong). The ERJ 140 variant seats 44, while the 135 seats 37.

Seeing as the both versions have at least 95% commonality with the ERJ 145, with the biggest visible difference being the shortened fuselages, telling these apart from one another is very difficult. To me, attempting to pick apart aircraft that have less than a 15 person capacity difference across three models is pointless. Instead, I'll just describe how to tell the ERJs apart from their closest lookalikes, the CRJs.

As you can see above, the ERJs have very, almost comically long noses, which taper entirely from top to bottom. Both these characteristics are exaggerated compared to the CRJs. The other easy way to tell them apart are the ERJs' engines. All ERJs have Rolls-Royce Allison AE3007 engines, which are entirely encased by the bypass air nozzles (the white casing around the engine in the picture above). That is quite different on the CRJs that have the rear portion of the engines, namely the combustion chamber and the turbine, exposed.

Currently there are a total of 697 ERJ 145 variants in service. The airline that I most associate with the ERJs is American Eagle Airlines which operates 200, as they use a ERJ 145 to connect to the American Airlines hub in Chicago from Rochester, such as the one below at O'Hare:

But the overall largest operator is ExpressJet with 244 ERJ 145s. ExpressJet operates under the banners of both Continental Express and United Express.

Bombardier. . . Those Damn Canadians

(CRJ200)

The final key Western commercial airplane manufacturer is Bombardier. Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier and Embraer are the four largest Western airliner manufacturers, in that order. Bombardier is a Canadian company that specializes in regional jets, turboprops, and corporate jets. Bombardier owns both Learjet and deHavilland Canada, which explains the later two of its specializations. But out of respect for deHavilland's amazing designs, I will cover the turboprops (the Dash 8/Q series) in a separate post focusing on deHavilland Canada.

Once you push aside the Learjet and deHavilland families, Bombardier only has two lines of regional jets, which are quite prevalent. In fact, Bombardier's regional jet families are very similar to the Embraer E-Jet families in their composition. There are two "sets," the CRJ100/CRJ200, and the CRJ700/900/1000. Each subsequent type is simply a stretched or larger version of the previous model. So realistically, you only need to be able to identify the families as a whole, instead of each type, just as with the Embraers.

First I will explain how to identify Bombardier regionals in general. They are very easy to spot, with the only similar plane in their class being the increasingly rare Fokker regionals. What stands out the most is that the engines are mounted in the rear on the fuselage. The wings are swept back at a steep angle. They are like much smaller McDonnell-Douglas MD80s, except the noses are different. The Bombardiers are similar to the Embraers as the noses are like the bullet trains, with almost the entire taper being down from the top to the bottom. To me, they kind of look like pencils as two-thirds of the narrow fuselage is forward of the sweep wing and the nose is pointy. Finally, the engines are quite distinctive. They have a very cylindrical forward section (bypass duct) and a cone-like, metallic colored rear section that is almost equally long (which is unusual), as you can see here:

(CRJ100)

So what's the difference between the CRJ100/200 series (which are the two above pictures) and CRJ700/900/1000 series? Simply put, size and a few added bells and whistles. They all have similar ranges, speeds, and ceilings. They also increase in capacity at quite regular intervals, unlike the Embraers, so they cover a lot of the regional market. Instead of differentiating each type, I'll just give you the range of capacities and first flights.

The CRJ100 and CRJ200 are the same capacity at 50 passengers. The CRJ200 is just a reengined version with slightly better range and fuel economy than the 100. The CRJ100 first flew in 1991.

The CRJ700/900/1000 series transports 70 to 100 passengers, with each subsequent model carrying about 20 more people. The CRJ700 first flew in 2000, and the CRJ1000 (which looks almost awkwardly long for the size of its engines, see below) first flew in late 2009 and has yet enter regular service.

(CRJ1000)

How do you tell the difference between the two families? Well, you can always count the windows and estimate the seating capacity, but that's boring and difficult. Sometimes you can just eyeball the fuselage length and know if at least its not a CRJ100/200. The only way I know to tell between the CRJ200 and CRJ700/900/1000 is that the latter series has leading edge slats. From a distance slats can be very hard to spot if they aren't deployed (they shouldn't be on the ground or in cruise). But if you do happen to see slats on a CRJ, then you know that it has to be CRJ700/900/1000. (If you don't know what slats are, just tell me and then I can make a post on them)

Who uses Bombardiers in the U.S.? Well, almost everyone. These are extremely popular aircraft with the legacy carriers as they can be used for gazillion smaller airports around the country (including, surprise! Rochester) Delta Connection alone (or its subsidiaries) operates an incredible 381 CRJ200s, 66 CRJ700s, and 101 CRJ900s. Considering that Delta/Northwest, the largest airline in the world (for now, United/Continental is forecasted to surpass it), only operates 18 B777s and 16 B747s, you can see the huge numerical difference between the big widebodies and the regionals. Low-cost airlines tend not to use the Bombardiers as they are too small for their operations, which stipulate larger aircraft (usually E-Jets, A320s, B737s) to lower the cost per passenger seat per mile.