Been a bit since i've worked in the regional world. The weight and balance program is individual to each airline. When I was at expressjet technically per the FOM nothing more than a personal item (+ a few cutouts for certain items) was allowed in cabin. This lowered average pax weight and led to less WxB issues on paper. When you do your representative routes and average weight every few years you run those per the FOM and boom suddenly average pax weight is less than normal( total weight remains same for those evaluated flights but it helps out for everything else after). This led to the side affect of FA's who knew the actual rule being bag nazi's which hurts the customer experience. Only thing worse than an annoying rule is one thats very selectively enforced.
Even things like closets we had a floor load limit which when crew bags were in there were more than likely maxed out. So some FA's would decline to put pax stuff in there others would break that limit.
On CRJs a full 22inch rollaboard fits but I doubt their WxB program is approved for that, For smaller bags there is inconsistency cause FA's get abused by their mgmt. Flight doesn't meet D0 cause bags had to swim upstream to go get gatechecked FAs do the carpet dance so they get stricter on bags. Also training programs suck they are bare minimum so a lot of old wives tales or old standards stick around. Could be any of those things, different WxB programs among carriers maybe they are the same and only one is enforcing the actual rule(regionals aren't exactly pinnacles of .quality operations.)
EDIT:
Originally Posted by
thunderdeacon
Thanks for the information. I completely understand what you are saying. However, I have been on a completely full CR7 between OKC and LAX on Skywest many times, and they allow roll-a-boards as long as they fit in the bins. They had no problems with weight, balance, or being able to fill up the aircraft on a flight that hits the upper end of the range of the aircraft. I've also been on full mesa CR9 aircraft on longer flights like DFW-BFL and DFW-JAX with no issues as well. I don't understand how a rollaboards cause issues on a PSA CRJ but not on a Skywest or Mesa CRJ.
Not privy to their WxB approvals but it could be they just don't enforce them. Say once every 2 years or whenever you do evaluations you are selective on those routes and enforce the rules. Then the other 99.99 percent of flights you wink wink nudge nudge the rules and let whatever onboard. As pilots we don't actually know anything about the cabin other than we have X passengers and average weight is 184(or w/e) + average bag weight of 7lbs(or whatever we weighed on that representative flight that we selectively picked and followed the rules) Maybe PSA actually taught their FA's the actual rule and said enforce it. Maybe SKW and Mesa let the information be buried in the FOM so FA's ignore it.