Question about RJs

B767

Well-Known Member
How economical are RJs compared to aircraft at mainline? I work at an FBO that has the airline contracts out of COS. There are numerous departures to DEN throughout the day. The morning looks like this:

06:50
07:50
09:37
10:12
11:15

This is just United. No Frontier/Lynx. I could be missing a few though. There used to be more during the summer months. All these flights leave pretty much full, maybe a few empty seats, which are filled by nonrevs. Why not have a larger aircraft feed DEN? Are RJs really that economical?!
 
frequency. People want to go when they want to go. This is made slightly more economical by the fact that the guys in the RJ are being paid beans so they can pay their dues and get that major airline job they're pricing out of existence. Ah, irony. Oh, and then they clog up the busy airports, further eroding the viability of the airlines.
 
Normally per leg an RJ is more economical. Per seat mile the larger airplanes are more economical. DAL ran L-1011s to some cities in Florida (when they had L-1011s), from Atlanta and they were always full. This was much more economical than running a bunch of RJs. Now if the large airplane is empty... it's very expensive to operate.
 
A 50 seat RJ costs over 20 cents per seat mile.

Mainline jet around 10 cents.


As an example:

In 1998, Delta used to fly 3 B-727s a day from SLC to places like Great Falls, Kalispel, Boise, Bozeman, Helena, Spokane, Calgary, Pasco, Billings, ABQ, FAT, SMF....etc. The flights were full. Delta posted over a billion dollars in operating profits.

Now those cities have all RJ's. Maybe 3 to 6 per day. Since then, they've lost money most quarters.



What airline management fails to understand, is that in a place like Great Falls, frequency does not matter much.....at least not as much as price. Small isolated market = captive customer. Frequency is only good (adds value) in a big place like New York City.
 
A 50 seat RJ costs over 20 cents per seat mile.

Mainline jet around 10 cents.


As an example:

In 1998, Delta used to fly 3 B-727s a day from SLC to places like Great Falls, Kalispel, Boise, Bozeman, Helena, Spokane, Calgary, Pasco, Billings, ABQ, FAT, SMF....etc. The flights were full. Delta posted over a billion dollars in operating profits.

Now those cities have all RJ's. Maybe 3 to 6 per day. Since then, they've lost money most quarters.



What airline management fails to understand, is that in a place like Great Falls, frequency does not matter much.....at least not as much as price. Small isolated market = captive customer. Frequency is only good (adds value) in a big place like New York City.

it also helps that jet-a was like 10 cents....
 
Normally per leg an RJ is more economical. Per seat mile the larger airplanes are more economical. DAL ran L-1011s to some cities in Florida (when they had L-1011s), from Atlanta and they were always full. This was much more economical than running a bunch of RJs. Now if the large airplane is empty... it's very expensive to operate.
I remember flying on one from ATL-FLL. It was packed.
From my flight log it looks like I wrote down 2000 as the year of the flight, but I'm not sure how accurate that really is. I started a flight log when I was in high school and started flying a lot (commercially and in training), but a good bit of the flights were from a while back and I only had the ticket stubs from a few of them so the date might be off. Checking the all-knowing wikipedia, DAL retired them in 2001, so 2000 is reasonable.

As for the CRJ question, I'd argue it was one (not the) of the reasons IDE went down. That's not mentioning some questionable route choices, frequencies, and other decisions by the management. The Airbus was what pulled IDE's weight, but it wasn't enough. I don't know the full story as I just worked ramp, and I didn't take classes in airline management, so what I say is based on what I was told and what I could extrapolate.
 
I think the other thing about RJs is that (especially the longer range ones) with them airlines have been able to send a small plane into what used to be another airlines "territory" and get more customers. The upper midwest used to be Northwest's territory, but other airlines started lobbing RJs in there to steal customers away. Same with with Delta in the southeast, etc.
 
A 50 seat RJ costs over 20 cents per seat mile.

Mainline jet around 10 cents.


As an example:

In 1998, Delta used to fly 3 B-727s a day from SLC to places like Great Falls, Kalispel, Boise, Bozeman, Helena, Spokane, Calgary, Pasco, Billings, ABQ, FAT, SMF....etc. The flights were full. Delta posted over a billion dollars in operating profits.

Now those cities have all RJ's. Maybe 3 to 6 per day. Since then, they've lost money most quarters.



What airline management fails to understand, is that in a place like Great Falls, frequency does not matter much.....at least not as much as price. Small isolated market = captive customer. Frequency is only good (adds value) in a big place like New York City.

Cost per seat mile, you may be right (not sure what it is now). The problem is when that larger jet is not full- the cost per leg is very expensive compared to the RJ. Ideally an airline would run 747s on every route. The problem is if that 747 is not full- you now need to go with a smaller airplane. No different with a MD-88 that is consistently less than a certain % full- you need to either cut flights, cut the city, or put a smaller airplane into that market.
It also works the other way around. If RJs are consistently full, then that market can sustain a larger airplane. This has happened in several markets; initially the RJs go in and establish the market, then larger airplanes pick up.
Airlines having problems is more complex than RJs- it could be argued that RJs have helped some airlines keep routes and stay in business. There are many smaller cities/towns that would currently not have service or limited service without them. Pan Am went under before RJs- but some companies have made the same mistakes Pan Am made. I remember listening to a United CEO brag in 2001 (just prior to 9/11), that they did not have to worry about losing money on their domestic route structure as they were making money hand over fist on their Asian routes. At the time I about choked- that was Pan Am's business model- it worked until international travel collapsed. Sure enough, the SAR scare hit and suddenly United had 747-400s flying empty. Just to park a 747 in the desert costs $60k/month- plus the airplane payments. You can imagine where that leads.
 
A 50 seat RJ costs over 20 cents per seat mile.

Mainline jet around 10 cents.


As an example:

In 1998, Delta used to fly 3 B-727s a day from SLC to places like Great Falls, Kalispel, Boise, Bozeman, Helena, Spokane, Calgary, Pasco, Billings, ABQ, FAT, SMF....etc. The flights were full. Delta posted over a billion dollars in operating profits.

Now those cities have all RJ's. Maybe 3 to 6 per day. Since then, they've lost money most quarters.



What airline management fails to understand, is that in a place like Great Falls, frequency does not matter much.....at least not as much as price. Small isolated market = captive customer. Frequency is only good (adds value) in a big place like New York City.

Also don't forget that during that time they posted over a billion dollars in operating profits, the pilots were actually being paid a respectable income for doing theirs jobs.
 
A 50 seat RJ costs over 20 cents per seat mile.

Mainline jet around 10 cents.

Utilization also comes into play with more expensive aircraft. A CRJ900 costs about 30 million. A 777 costs about 250 million.

The 777 flying two 9 hour legs is used for a much bigger percentage of the day, as compared to an RJ doing seven 1.5 hour legs. Higher utilization means you need fewer aircraft to log the same number of seat miles. Revenue per seat mile, and debt, are about the only two things Wall Street looks at when it comes to airlines.

Delta does still use 767's on some short routes, like ATL-TPA. But it makes more sense to use the wide bodies long haul, because with higher utilization, you end up needing fewer of them.
 
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