Hope this helps
Before I begin let me say that I am not at all complaining or whining about this airplane. Lots of people on the internet seem to confuse that with someone simply stating their opinions and answering a question.
You posed questions to the board, and you'll get answers. These are simply my answers and I do not go about my workday dwelling on things that I would have designed differently, but you asked and you'll receive.
I have much less experience in this airplane than some other JC members do (I have 900 hours in it) but I do feel like that is a big enough chunk of time now that my general opinions of the airplane will no longer change my an notable amount. In other words, if I was a captain on it ten years from now and you asked me the same thing, I'd probably have the same answers.
Let's hear some good things, bad things, interesting things...pretty much any inside information that pilots have from first hand experiences flying and operating the aircraft. So basically, what do/don't you like about the aircraft
I have never flown any other jet or turbine airplane. This probably influences my opinion of the EMB-145. My only way to compare against other types is jumpseating, of which I've flown on more than a hundred but never in the jumpseat of a CRJ so I can't help you with that comparison.
I've written a list that for me, is cumulative and comprehensive. Others may have additional opinions.
what do you like about the aircraft
Electrical System The electrical system is very automated. There is no selecting generators online after engine start (and other manual things like that) and with two generators per engine it provides more redundancy than the CRJ. Two computers called EDLs have what seems to be pretty good logic as to how they run the electrical system.
FADEC This is nice. When you push the throttles up for takeoff, you simply let them stop at the detent and the FADEC sets the proper takeoff thrust. Throughout the rest of the flight the FADEC will adjust maximum thrust available to keep everything in bounds. There are some other things like auto-relight and so forth that non-FADEC stuff may not have.
Headrests The cockpit seats have them. Some Boeing and Airbus stuff doesn't for some reason, so I'm glad this does.
I guess that's it.
what don't you like about the aircraft
Electrical System On the older airplanes in the fleet I use, every time the APU is started, both PFDs and MFDs blank out and several things are cleared out and reset, such as the heading, the course, or the selected altitude. So that's one more thing at the gate to either postpone doing until after the APU is started (which is usually five minutes prior to pushback) or re-do after the APU start.
FADEC The first two letters of that acronym are Full Authority. I disagree with that language when it comes to this airplane. After engine start the FADEC for each side must be reset and alternated from A to B or B to A. This only takes a second but why did they design it like that? Another thing that a Full Authority Digital Engine Control system should be able to do is abort an engine start if limitations are going to be exceeded. The thing automatically introduces fuel during start, why can't it automatically shutoff fuel if the start is not going well?
Nosewheel Static Wick I figure why not go all-out on here and include every little thing I think of. Well, this has to be in contention for top-ten dumbest things on transport category aircraft. This wick points down from the nose gear and is required to be touching the ground. Oh, I swear, it is always touching the ground. I've talked to people that say 80% of the time it is not touching the ground but jeez, I just have no idea what they are talking about.
This is one of several things on this airplane that surely must have been noticed being deficient in factory testing yet the airplane was released for delivery with the problem not solved.
Master Cautions When you first power-up the airplane there is a slew of master cautions and they all have to be cancelled by pressing the caution button. They then remain on the EICAS but the noise is silenced. Well, I no longer step foot in the cockpit without an earplug in my right ear. I am well aware that I baby my ears more than almost anyone else I know but I really don't feel like losing my hearing when I'm 30 and I really am not in the mood to constantly listen to a sharp pinging sound coming out of a speaker just one foot from my ear. This master caution issue is really a great example of "the boy who cried wolf." It comes on during far too many normal operations.
A master caution that must be silenced, in my opinion, should not come on unless something is abnormal. Is that not the whole intent of a caution message to the pilot? Why, then, after an engine start, must the pilot cancel a caution warning that AOA 1-2 HEAT INOP. It is the same every time, it is a normal condition, yet the engineers decided to make it something that must be silenced.
Another: every time you turn off the runway after landing you get a master caution: ENG NO TO DATA. Great. The FADEC does not have takeoff information for the next departure. Of
course it doesn't...we
haven't even turned off the runway from landing yet. Who designed this, test flew it, and deemed it acceptable?! It is not a huge distraction -- you just press it and it stops dinging, but the timing is bad. It often comes on when tower is telling you to hold short of a parallel runway or ground is giving you taxi instructions. The DING can perfectly block one word and then you're left to figure out what you didn't hear from ATC.
Moving Map Often times the FMS can't get the moving map to draw a straight line. Sometimes the line has gaps, like a bunch of tinker toy poles thrown down sort of as a line. That's nothing compared to the data it displays though.
There are two things you can add to the map to enhance your situation awareness. NAV and APT. NAV will display VORs in green and APT will display airports in blue.
The VORs that are displayed are the ones that are near you. Not much more than about 30-50 miles away will be displayed. This very much limits the usefulness of the NAV display feature.
The airports that are displayed, at least on the ones at my company, range from small to large and they are all places that are close to the airplane. Nothing ever displays more than 50 miles away. To anyone who is about to say "you should have charts out", don't even bother saying it because I do. In an emergency, when you want to find the nearest suitable airport, or while you are cruising along and mentally thinking of the best place to divert to should a problem arise or the weather deteriorates, the only airports you can see on the MFD are the ones that are not only close to you, but out of those nearby airports, quite a few of them are not suitable for the EMB-145 at all. Today I flew over E45, Pine Mountain Lake residential airpark in Groveland, California. I took my students there for checkrides two years ago. We would often be only 30-50 feet above the trees at the end of the 3000' runway in the summer. Why, why, why, at FL360, do I see E45 on my moving map? I zoom out and there is a black CRT abyss where SFO, OAK, SJC, SMF and all the other big runways are yet it tells me that there is a 3000' strip directly beneath us if we need to divert. Not sure if this is an Embraer problem or a Honeywell FMS problem, but it is probably equally a Honeywell problem. But I threw it on the list anyway because it is in Embraer's cockpit.
Panels On the walkaround there are panels to be opened, ranging from one on a normal flight to eleven on the first flight of the day. On several of these panels, the latch often jams and cannot be completely closed. Poor workmanship and design on the part of the manufacturer.
Chart Holder Where I work most people carry a metal chart holder that was built by either themselves if they have a bit of craftmanship, or some other pilot that sells them for $15. I want to know what Embraer pilots used to hold their charts. There is a clip on the yoke that works okay most of the time, but there is no place to store the Jepp binder since it could fall down into a hole that is on the FO side slightly in front of the cup-holder. You can leave an open Jepp binder there lengthwise however it can slide around and it sits unevenly on a paper clamp. The advantage of this location is that you can actually get full coverage on the chart at night from the map light.
Map Light If the map light is designed to be pointed at the 8" long 2" wide piece of wood that flops around and is strapped to a metal pole at the base of the side view window, it is mounted into the ceiling incorrectly because the top of the chart cannot be read and you have to reach up and pull the light and keep your hand there as you read the top of the approach plate.
TBCH This is a mystery. It stands for "Tuning Backup Control Head." Under normal circumstances it mirrors what frequences are set on the FO side. Or, you can do it the other way. But it is DC powered and the RMU for normal tuning is essential power. So in a really bad emergency you don't have the "backup."
What is the TBCH for?
Yoke The rams horns/bicycle handle shape of the yoke is unnecessary and makes flying more work than it needs to be. If the airplane had no autopilot and had to be hand flown for long periods of time then I could see a need for a more ergonomic shape than a yoke (but is a yoke really that bad?) but the bike handle shape does not impress me. When landing in a crosswind or gusty conditions the arm motions required are exaggerated due to the lateral motion you have to make to move the ailerons. The pivot point on the yoke is about a foot below an imaginary line drawn between a pilot's thumbs and this low of a pivot
point is what forces greater movements for roll control. In general I think the airplane handles like the 7000 gallon fuel truck I used to drive around an airport at a summer job. It does not feel light to the controls(this is not a complaint, just an observation).
Frame Rate The frame rate on the PFD is slow and choppy. My five year old desktop Dell computer can run a smoother frame rate on any plane in Microsoft Flight Simulator. On the contrary, the ISIS (digital backup combined AI, airspeed, and altimeter) runs very smoothly with an excellent frame rate.
IAS Hold / Mach Hold This mode of the autopilot holds the selected airspeed by adjusting pitch. It is too sensitive. A larger margin of error should be programmed into it. For example, it gets 1 fast in a descent and pitches up abruptly. That should not be the case. A +/- 5 or 10 knot range would greatly reduce the noticeable pitch adjustments that it makes when in IAS hold. The same goes for Mach Hold mode.
Mach Hold Altitude Capture The autopilot seems to have a difficult time leveling off from a climb that was done in Mach Hold. Why?
Aural Altitude Alerter Very annoying noise like a duck quacking three times loudly enough to block some ATC instructions or the other pilot. Not sure why in the 1990s the manufacturer could not find a more soothing tone like every other airplane has. Fortunately, where I fly the company is gradually phasing in a new alterter tone as the old ones break.
Localizer Capture The yoke abruptly snaps towards the localizer too often. In VMC I am almost always hand-flying by this point to avoid having the autopilot capture the localizer.
Autobrakes There are none. Now, my feet are perfectly capable of mashing the pedals down and getting the airplane stopped. However, on a snowy runway that is not so long, it would be nice to have the brakes decelerating the airplane the instant that the wheels are down, letting the pilot give more attention to directional control. Additionally, autobrakes activating on a rejected takeoff as the thrust levers come back would be nice, too. The B-757/767 series rolled out of the factory in the early 80s with autobrakes. The EMB-145 rolled out of the factory in the mid 90s without them.
Speedbrakes There should be more options as to the amount of speedbrakes available. They are either closed or open. An intermediate halfway selection would ease some of the pitching moment that results when they are selected at speeds of around 280 and higher. The auto-trim feature, which trims against the speedbrakes without pilot input, does work better at the lower speeds.
Wind Noise Very loud cockpit at cruise speed. Probably because it is the same shape as the Brasilia yet moving much faster.
Radar Not very effective past 50 miles. Sometimes it does not seem to display what is really out there. 12" radar dish. After flying with a decent sized assortment of captains in conditions where we were using the radar to avoid weather, I sincerely doubt that it is user error. It gets the job done though.
Tiller Disclaimer: my use of the tiller is limited to a few dozen turns getting to the runway from the gate in the full motion sim. That is all. But I must say, I've never been jerked side-to-side in a Boeing, MD, or Airbus as I have in the ERJ. Seems like the thing is too sensitive. And why should it have to be pressed down to turn the plane? Again though, this one is something I have no real experience with.
Clearing Turns Sometimes this is user error when a pilot things they'll speed things up by swinging the heading bug in the direction of the turn to get it doing and then press direct in the FMS and engage LNAV. From what I've seen so far that is the worst way to do it. Other times, without the pilot doing anytihng but telling the plane to go direct to a fix in LNAV, it takes too many left and right banks to figure out which heading it needs to fly to stay on course. This happens with strong wind and weak wind.
Drifting Boat Feel In cruise the thing rocks back and forth more than any other jet seems to. Not sure why but it's funny because I've got a bunch of pictures I've taken in cruise of the cockpit, views outside,
the instruments, etc. and in every single one of them the attitude indicator is indicating a bank to the left or right.
Ice Test The airplane came out in the 1990s. I can't imagine that the technology did not exist for this machine to do its own tests of the ice protection system. An engine runup should not be required to depart in icing conditions on the first flight of the day.
Passenger Seats They curve the
wrong way. At least in my spine, there needs to be some more lumbar support and the headrest needs to be farther back. The seats are very uncomfortable without a pillow or balled up sweatshirt/jacket/blanket behind my back. But everybody is different in this department.
Lavatory The sink is to small. The flow of water should come out of the faucet for a few seconds after you press the faucet, instead of how it is now where you have to have one hand pressing it down and the instant you let go, the water stops.
Electrical Gremlins Too many of them. Often times a caution message dissapears before the procedure can be run through in its entirety.
Sun Visors The piece that holds the visor onto the track is lame. Some of the most worn out ones barely stay in position at all.
Vertical Path Deviation I'll start out by saying that of course if you can multiply or divide by three and do basic mental math, then you can do the descent planning in your head. However in this day and age it is also nice to use the technology afforded to us to save fuel and time since it is so expensive. Now that I've said that -- to compare to another airplane type. The B-757/767 series came out more than a full decade before the EMB-145. On the screen directly in front of the pilot in the Boeing, there is a green arc which shows where the top of climb or bottom of descent is in the current situation. Additionally, a small vertical path glideslope appears next to the attitude indicator and when the deviation is full scale,
the actual deviation in feet of altitude is displayed so that the pilot can tell just
how far the plane is from where the vertical path is. "We're 2000 feet high." "We're 800 feet below it." In the EMB-145, this "Chinese glideslope" does appear when you have a crossing restriction entered in the FMS. However, when it goes full scale you have no way of knowing how far above or below it you are. Well, there is one way.
If you want to figure out your vertical path deviation,
all you have to do is press
Nav
Page 2
Maintenance
Next
Setup
Sensors
VN Data
"Ah, we're 750 feet high."
Landing Gear Handle There should be an outward motion required in order to move the lever up or down. Currently it can be bumped down in cruise with no motion other than something pushing it straight down. I got my complex endorsement in a Mooney that had more protection than that.
Systems Schematics One thing that I know is on the CRJ is systems schematics pages. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to see how a system is configured. Again, not a really big deal but then again this thing came out when the 777 did and look what is in that cockpit.
TCAS Display It would be nice if the TCAS targets were on the moving map so that you could monitor a system and the TCAS at the same time.
Vne below 10,000 Below 10,000 feet, Vne is 250 knots. If ATC says flying 250 knots you can barely do it without setting of the master caution and hearing DING DING DING -- HIGH SPEED. I understand that bird strikes against the windshield is what limited the speed but just another ten knots to 260 would have been great. As close as ATC needs to space airplanes together, flying around at 240 might actually make a difference.
Green Needle / Purple Needle There is too much nonsense associated with each of these. Green needles is raw data from the frequency tuned into the nav radio, and purple needle goes off of the FMS.
While in purple needles, you can't see DME from the green needles frequency. There are plenty of times that it is desired to see DME while in LNAV but this system does not allow that unless one pilot has their side in green needles. Additionally, there is no way to set the green needles course while in LNAV unless you disengage LNAV. When briefing the approach at cruise, if you want to set the final approach course in at that time (which is appropriate since that is when the approach brief is going on) you have to select heading mode, green needles, spin the course in, and then engage LNAV again.
Weights Fortunately where I fly this airplane, the company has taken many steps towards making the ERJ more capable in this area. The machine as undergone multiple boosts to maximum weights including MGTOW, MGLW, and MZFW. With the original weights straight out of the factory, I wonder why they even put 50 seats in the cabin. But years and years have gone by and airlines have spent lots of money on updating these weight limits and weight and balance programs and it is now better. Case in point: On an "LR2" version of the LR, with 50 passengers, two jumpseaters, and a maxed out cargo bin, MZFW is still not exceeded. The only way to exceed it is if several passengers bring large carry-on bags that the flight attendant counts as bags on their paper count. Not restricting at alll, and MGLW has improved with these modifications as well.
Now just go backup and read the first three sentences of this post. That is what I have to say about the ERJ.
