Originally Posted by
jiburi
I've got the eerie feeling that this will be used for intercontinental flights exceeding 3 hours. Does anyone want to be on a CRJ for more than 3 hours?
I don't. But I'm not sure they would use it on flights that long. From DTW, the CRJ-900 couldn't reach the West Coast with its range of 2774km. The best it could do would be something like DTW-PHX, but that might even be pushing it depending on loads and fuel reserves.
From MSP, the CRJ-900 could reach any point in the CONUS, all Canadian destinations, and northern Mexico. Now, the longest nonstop from MSP in the CONUS is MSP-SFO which is just over a three hour flight. But the flights to the coasts are all such high demand flights that they'd be wasting a RJ on such a long flight when they're obviously filling (and overselling) 757s and A320s.
I think we might see a few routes approaching 3 hours, but they may be to destinations that are over-served right now, or perhaps they'll use it to open up more nonstop flights to destinations not currently served (MSP-RNO perhaps?). In those cases, I think the CRJ makes sense.
I don't believe you'll see NW put the CRJ on MSP-LAX/SEA/SFO routes.