New quest... [To avoid RJ segments]
 

..to minimize RJ segs for upcoming travel. I would like to fly fewer than 5 during the forthcoming qualifying year.

I can't believe that some of you are tough enough to qualify for GE or even PE through mainly - or solely - RJ flying...aaargh! So, do tell... tube warriors, how many RJ segs have you flown this year? I've managed to keep it to seven but it seems like more.

And COInsider, you guys should award the winner a prize...how about free systemwide redemption for 2......on COEX only :rolleyes:

RTS

LOL :)

Funny thing, to me, as bad as the RJ's are, I think CO's 737's in coach on a transcon are worse.

Think about:

On an ERJ you have 31" seat pitch, no middle seats, much more comfortable leather seats and 1 lavatory for 50 pax.

On the CO 737-800's (mainly what is flown transcon out of EWR on CO) you have the same brutal 31" seat pitch, one third of the seats are middle seats, and there are only two lavatories for 141 pax.

That is my dfefinition of dreadful...

At leasst the ERJ's aren't capable of flying 6 and a half hours they way the 738's do.

You sparked my curiosity about what exactly I've flown on CO Domestically this year...so far according to One Pass Stmnts...


CO RJ's=39
CO 737=50

It sure felt like more RJs than that though..;)

I think I've only ever flown two segements on CO RJs (EWR-MHT and CLE-PHL). I didn't find them to be cramped or uncomfortable.


[mod hat on]
I've edited the title of this thread to clarify what the topic at hand is.

Xyzzy
CO forum moderator

The last time I flew a CO RJ was early 2003. In several markets where CO went all-RJ, CO lost my business. If more of us voted with our pocketbooks this way, maybe CO would find other ways to serve lower capacity markets without sacrificing their mainline product in favor of RJs.

Bravo! Keep it up. ^

I've had 32 flights on ERJ's this year. Generally good except for the 3 roller coaster rides. A few weeks ago when I stepped into a 735 I said to myself that it looked so big.

1A and 12A make RJ's tolerable for up to two hours.

It's actually two lavs for 127 passengers - F has its own lav. Thus, only 63.5 passengers must share a lav in Y on the 738.

RJ Warrior
 

91 RJ segments (all but 4 since March 06) RJ Plat!
4 737 segments

And it doesn't get any easier with experience :(

44 CO segments YTD, 11 on RJs (25%).

Fortunately, all but one of those were sub-500 miles. In fact, all but the one were actually under 200 miles, so that's bearable.

A couple years ago, I had longer ones (e.g., IAH-CLT-IAH), but I was not going to do that again!

I looked at my other flying, and noticed that CO is right in the middle in terms of number of RJs:

Flights YTD
AA 4 segments, 0 RJs (0%)
CO 44 segments, 11 RJs (25%)
DL 2 segments, 1 RJ (50%)
NW 19 segments, 4 RJs (79%)
AS 11 segments, 2 RJs (18%) -- and free beer!
UA 14 segments, 2 RJs (14%) and 2 props (14%)

I'm almost exclusivly RJs
 

Covering the NE for my company I am usually only in RJs. IAD, PIT, ROC, BVM, BUF and Portland ME to name a few. Being almost 6 ft tall I'm not crazy about the height of the cabin but I really don't mind the seats. I usually score the A seat for the exit row so I'm fine. I liked the gate check feature, too. Other then that, they are quite noisy IMHO. Ihave only had 6 RTs in them so far but 3 more RTs planned by the end of the year.

CHeers

I agree the height is pain but the seats are fine, particularly if you get 12A or 1A. I am not a huge fan of the RJ's, but I have come to like them.

CO does not fly any 737 configured for 127 passebgers in Y.

Its 737-800 without the midcabin lavatory (the workhorse of transcon out of EWR) is configured for 141 passengers in Y, Thus, this works out to 70.5 passengers per lav, almost 50% more pax per lav than on the ERJ.

The 737-800 without midcabin lav was fine for its original purpose, which was medium-haul routes. But when you have so many people sharing so few lavs for over 6 hours, it gets pretty brutal.

Here are the layouts in coach and the number of lavs for CO's planes:

ERJ 135 -- 37 pax -- 1 lav -- 37 pax/lav
ERJ 145 -- 50 pax -- 1 lav -- 50 pax/lav

737-300 -- 112 coach pax -- 2 coach lavs -- 56 pax/lav
737-500 -- 106 coach pax -- 2 coach lavs -- 53 pax/lav
737-700 -- 112 coach pax -- 2 coach lavs -- 56 pax/lav
737-800 w/out Midcabin lav -- 141 coach pax -- 2 coach lavs -- 70.5 pax/lav
737-800 with Midcabin lav -- 132 coach pax -- 3 coach lavs -- 44 pax/lav
737-900 -- 149 coach pax -- 3 coach lavs -- 49.6 pax/lav

757-200 -- 159 coach pax -- 3 coach lavs -- 53 pax/lav
757-300 -- 192 coach pax -- 4 coach lavs -- 48 pax/lav
767-200 -- 149 coach pax -- 3 coach lavs -- 49.6 pax/lav
767-400 -- 200 coach pax -- 6 coach lavs -- 33.3 pax/lav
777-200 -- 235 coach pax -- 6 coach lavs -- 39.1 pax/lav

If you want to see for yourself, here's the link: http://www.continental.com/web/en-US...t/default.aspx

So what's instructive here is that CO doesn't fly any plane with much more than 50 coach pax per lav, except the 737-800 without midcabin lavatory.

Also, as the distances the plane flies increase, the number of lavs per passenger also increases.

The only--glaring--exception is the 737-800 without midcabin lavatory. Although this ship is the workshorse of CO's transcon out of EWR it has by far and away the highest ratio ofpax to lavs which makes it supremely unsuited for flights of these lengths.

Interestingly, CO operates most of its 737-800 with Midcabin lavatory on shorter flights where there is less demand. And so, because of the greater demand of the EWR transcon routes, they can pack in an extra 9 coach passengers by using the model without the midcabin lav on the transcon routes.

That may be good for CO's revenue stream, but it comes at the expense of passenger comfort and convenience.


Edited for typos

ERJ: 39
Boeing Mainline: 51

You're right - it's 141 coach, 14 F, not 127 coach, 14 F - my oversight. So, that's 70.5 passengers per lav.

Dude, I would consider buying a gun and shooting myself after flight #60 on them...<g>

I think you are crowned the RJ King and should get Plat for life for that...:)

TWA Fan 1, thanks for the statistics on the different lavatories. I didn't realize that there was such a wide discrepancy on one configuration of the B737-800. I am lucky that I don't need to visit the lavatory during most flights.

Backbreakers
 

Six and a half!!!! OMG!! Three and one-half hours on an ERJ, ORF-IAH, are torture enough. I'll do ANYTHING to route myself out of that one. I'm small (5'3") but can barely walk or turn my head/neck after that route.
_____________________________________________

I don't know what it is about the RJs that just make it such a horrible experience. Maybe it's the idea of flying in such a small tube filled with gas or increased feeling of chop that just makes me feel turned off by them. Either way, I've only flown three RJ segments this year (thankfully, being based in HNL means no RJs out of home ;) -- yet. :eek: ), 2 on CO and 1 on DL. All three flights not the least bit enjoyable. And, a continuing commitment to stay on mainline flights by this traveler.

I'm with you. But if you're ever unlucky enough to sit in an aisle seat in the aft section of one of these 738's, then the issue is not whether you need to visit the facilities, it's the continuous line of your fellow passengers waiting for one of the two lavatories.

You end up with someone's elbow rubbing against your face, or, worse yet, someone's posterior.

Don't get me wrong, a third lavatory would not miraculously make this queue vanish, but there would be fewer pax/lav and the line in the rear would be shorter as about one third of the pax would choose the mid-cabin lav.

When you are seated in an ERJ, there is definetly more elbow and shoulder room than the mainline planes. They aren't that load, quiter than a DC-9, well maybe not the screaming APUs some of them have.

Lavs take up room which means they take up seats. The earlier 757's (not the type CO has) use to have two more lavs in the rear for a total of 6. Those have long since been removed for an extra row of seats.

I agree with the basic premise of this thread that flying long distances on RJ's is not comfortable.

What's sad is that no CoEx RJ is as uncomfortable as the 737's CO flies tanscon out of EWR.

The RJ have more comfortable leather seats, the same industry-minimum 31" seat pitch. The RJ's have no middle seats and much larger windows.

Yes, the environment is narrower, but I find the packed-to-the-rafters CO 737's on a transcon far more dreadful, especially if I book late and land a middle seat.

I have about 41 RJ segments so far this year...almost exclusively within Texas.

I don't minf the RJ's, and if I can snag 12A, I actually enjoy flyign on them. Hey, it's better than WN....

I find that I usually end up with a headache if I take an RJ flight that's more than an hour in duration.

Best strategy for avoiding RJ's in the Midwest: www.nwa.com

I've flown on RJs 291 times this year.

260 on the 145.

19 in and out of Canada

17 in and out of Mexico

21 duration under 1 hour
158 1:00-1:59
84 2:00-2:59
26 3:00-3:59
2 4hrs and more

Good lord!

And if you have to fly an NW RJ, how about the Avro-85, with its spacious cabin, and 16 FC seats? It's the quietest plane in the sky and it has the unique feature of having no reverse thrusters on its engines.

I think the AVROs are retired now, or will be retired shortly.

Perhaps, but I did fly one a few weeks ago.

They are certainly not yet gone, but they will be soon. NW is skimping on the cleaning budget by the smell of the ARJs, though, which suggests they have to be offloading them soon before they become a health hazard.

I seem to remember that early 2007 was the end for NW's ARJs?

Edited to add: Wikipedia (link) says that all ARJ flying is now out of MSP and DTW, not MEM, and MSP flights will cease 10/31/06, with DTW flights ceasing either 12/15/06 or 12/31/06 (different dates quoted in different places in the article). The ARJs are being sold to a European carrier, IIRC.

On most airlines, I have to fly RJs out of and into CMH to catch connecting flights. I don't mind it so much because it takes less time to board and deplane. Everytime I fly, one segment in a one way trip is usually an RJ.

RJs are hard to avoid unless I fly Southwest (which I don't)

I'm just curious which RJ flights are this long?

And isn't 4 hours of flight time right at the limit of the 145's range?

Block time, including time sitting on the ground during delays.

4:05 YYZ-IAH
3:42 YYZ-EWR (not a typo)

Got you. It reminds me a little bit of what happened to TWA's former hub at STL after the takeover (pillage) of TWA by AA.

AA dropped almost all the mainline at STL, and it was possible to fly transcon on AA, through STL, on RJ's the entire trip.

Although there was a stopover, this meant close to 7 hours in an RJ.

Things have improved slightly since those drak days although precious few of the terrific hard-working professionals of TWA have ever seen another's day work since with AA.

There is no TSA or CHQ rj that can make it from the west coast to stl without being weight restricted to about 10 people (excluding go jets). From where on the west coast were they flying? The furthest they go I thought was DEN or ABQ

You're right. But it's still a lot of time in an RJ for passengers connecting through STL from the East Coast.

Here's an example of EWR-DEN via STL:


AMERICAN AIRLINES OPERATED BY AMERICAN CONNECTION/CHAUTAUQUA 5307 EWR
Newark 09/28/2006
10:45 AM STL
St Louis 09/28/2006
12:30 PM ERD Economy
View Seats 873 N/A

AMERICAN AIRLINES OPERATED BY AMERICAN CONNECTION/TRANS STATES 5479 STL
St Louis 09/28/2006
01:55 PM DEN
Denver 09/28/2006
03:25 PM ER4 Economy
View Seats 781 N/A

6 hr
40 min

I had the chance to fly one of the AVRO's MEM-OKC one day, and although they follow NWA's standard of old, kinda-ratty airplanes, I did like the non-divided cabin and the large number of FC seats...there were more people in FC than in Y!

BTW: Didn't I see a ERJ flight this Summer IAH-NAS that approached 3:45? It doesn't seem to come up this winter, so maybe there were too many complaints about it....I can't imagine starting/ending a vacatgion with such a long RJ flight. That being said, I have said many times that I prefer an A side seat in a RJ to almost any seat in Y on a 73x. Of course, almost all of my flights are in Texas, so they are 1:20 at most...

Or NWA with mostly DC9 and Airbus 320s.... to all 3 hubs

Or Delta to ATL on an MD88 or 737, or LAX on a 737

Or United to ORD on a 737

You really DONT need to be on an RJ if you don't want to from CMH =)