Don't be shy -- we made out like bandits. It's clear the manufacturers were trying to bribe us. Miniture atlases, books, models of all sorts, key rings (quality ones, too) stickers, posters, you name it, we got it. (But my teddy bear was only wearing a Boeing tie.)

But I too lost my Embrarer bag. We were using all our goodies to stuff the bins for testing purposes. (As well as using ourselves to stuff the seats, also for testing purposes. The best is when we had three FTers all lined up in a row.)

Well crap. Where was I when you were talking to "Nick?" I waited all day to ask the right person at Bombardier a question, that being "Did the designers go insane while designing the CRJs, or were they insane to begin with?" Now that I think about it perhaps a better question would have been "Did the designers used to design websites for Destina?" That's how bad these planes are. There ain't nuthin' good about 'em.


Indeed! In fact they were the widest Y seats on display, at 18.25" wide. They also had more room between the window and window seat, and had a much wider middle arm rest, giving even more individual space.

When we were stress testing the seats on the CRJs, whoever sat in the window seat had to lean into the ailse seat. It was quite simply physically impossible not to. And with the two of us (cattle and I) that meant leaning in so far that even the aisle seat occupant physically had to lean into the ailse. Good thing there's no galley space, 'cause getting a full size catering cart down the aisle in this situation would be very ugly.

On the other hand, with the ERJ, sitting side by side was quite comfortable. You didn't even have to lean in on the window seat, though your arm might be brushing lightly against the fuselage or window. And the seats were such that we quite literally doddled getting out of that plane. Even when the manufacturer's rep shooed us along as we (and the Global crew) were blocking traffic, we simply moved further back in the plane and continued our seat testing.

And as noted elsewhere, the air vents were actually functional.

But you forgot to tell them about Boeing's noise-cancelling windows.


Neither can I stress enough how good the ERJ was. But I suspect people are starting to get the picture.

Several of the manufacturers stressed how the lower operating or purchase costs would be good for passengers because that would result in lower fares. I wasted no time is explaining that I found this argument completely unconvincing as the fares are obviously set by competitive factors -- one only has to look through Expedia or Travelocity to see that every fare is almost exactly the same across different airlines.

So to us as passengers, one thing and one thing only mattered -- comfort, which primarily means space. It also means things like lav space and air vent effectiveness, but space trumps all.

I even made it clear to every manufacturer rep and AC employee or exec that I would rather fly on a US carrier with a connection in ORD or anywhere else, rather than fly a CRJ. Some seemed a lot less surprised than others.

Other than Shwartz's, I can't report either. But I'm not sure the rest of the gang was done, even as I was checking out at 11am. For all I know, the remaining FTers and their AC escorts are still turning Montreal upside down.