The bae146 / RJ was designed for short take-off /landing by Avro's by a team of Engineers in the 1950's which included my father.... The project was put on hold and the first a/c started flying in the early 1980's.
The Rj's are great little planes and were designed to operate routes such as I.O.M / GCI and not for longer routes such as Lon- Mad, its just that they work so well out of city. The trouble with the B.A aircraft is the configuration... for example, swiss configure them 5 across in Y, 4 across in business, whilst Ba squeeze an extra seat in. leg room is reduced as well, and the aircraft are typically 100 knts slower than other jets you may have been on. Storage space is poor, and very poor around the wing area where the engineering intrudes in to the overhead lockers. None of this matters much on short flight, (i.e LGW-GCI) which only takes about 40 mins, but it gets MUCH more noticeable on longer flights... Lets not forget that the Royal flight use these aircraft, but I guess the configuration is somewhat different!!
If you are booked on the RJ as a solo pax enjoy the exp, and try to get an empty seat next to you by playing with the OLCI.^