larsll

Did my first segment on a CRJ 900 today NCE-MUC. 83 pax, all full. What really really surprised me was that there was only 2 flight attendants. With 15-20 busines pax it is needless to say that the service was slow. I was at row 15, emergency exit, with enormous amounts of legroom. Drinks and sandwich came only minutes before the decent to MUC began though...

I know some semi-no-frills regional carriers operate this way, but if you try to do both decent business and a decent economy I would say that 3 attendants are required.

The aircraft itself is really really nice. New style seats (same "design" as the A320s and 737s are receiving). Nicely accompanied with an article in the in-flight magazine talking about how the bird was delivered from Bombardier. Except for being very long the aircraft can be recognized on the field because of two overwing emergency exists on each side (rows 14 and 15), as well as two fins on the underbody at the tail.

flysurfer

Yep, nice plane, flew in it 11 days ago on the EADS/Eurocopter shuttle route. This means that there were plenty of C pax, but of course I was in coach and exit row 15, so legroom was great. The serving FA immediately asked every coach pax for their second beverage wish, so everybody was invited to have two drinks.

A-340 GOT

The CRJ-900 is indeed a very nice plane, best canadair jet for sure. I think the seat comfot will be raised even more once LH Cityline also will block adjacent seats in C as I´ve understood will be introduced this autumn.?!
How many FAs are on Citylines Avro:s ?? I think it is only 2 as well with even more pax then the CRJ-900.

oliver2002

A FO from a CRJ 700 travelling beside me also mentioned that CL will start blocking seats in the CRJ business section this year. Strange... must be a terrible loss to LH.

EW and most north american airlines operate CRJ200 with only one and CRJ700/900 with only two crew, minimum as required by the LBA/FAA. In the new no frills world an FA is primarily justified by the need to operate an emergency exit. LH FA unions fought this big time, but gave in after 9/11 and the various D-check programmes LH put in place to save money. Since they serve sandwiches most of the time anyway, work has reduced...

f0zzyNUE

perhaps the crew was simply too slow. the teams of two eurowings FAs being able to serve every passenger on a fully booked bae-146 with their favorite drink on the 25 minute short-hop FRA-NUE are very, very impressive. they can even collect the garbage before landing ... ^
LH serving this route twice a day on a 737 does not provide any service to eco passengers (even when there are only 15 people in eco and three FA on board ...

CHris

MCL

Is that a fact or wishful thinking? And is it also valid for the small versions? 100 and 200??

From time to time I have to fly with those small planes and it would be great to have a free seat next to you in C.

MCL

flysurfer

Well, just make sure to fly it after 01OCT.

Felixberlin

So, that is offcial? Especially for me being MUC based, this is a huge improvement ^ - hope that it covers Team Lufthansa as well.

By the way, does anybody know if it is gonna have any impact on the AB6? Would be odd if it became the only plane without seat blocking...

Cheers,

felix

larsll

It is the business service that "ruins" it. The standard LH C treatment actually takes quite a lot of time, back and forth, meal, drink once, bread, drink second time, bread, collect meal. Essentially all of it was done before Y was served. If the aircraft was in eco-only (or very few C pax) I am sure it would not have been any problems at all to serve a CRJ-900 with two attendants.

As for the number; I believe the requirement is 1 FA per 50 pax. Not sure what the border is, if CRJ-100s 50 pax requires 1 or 2. 49 should in all cases require only 1.

flysurfer

I read it in the Inflight Magazine. However, checking seatmaps in ExpertFlyer for October, all the seats are still available. Then again, this makes sense, as LH can't know in advance wether a single pax wants to sit in the aisle or in the window seat. And I'm sure there are some couples who actually prefer to sit together and next to each other, so I guess this will be technically handles as a "soft" feature, similar to *G seat blocking.

f0zzyNUE

as for the business class service on EW operated planes: it works like that: they hand out the tablets with prepared meal (nothing hot). afterwards they immediately start drink service. second drink service for business takes place when they finished drink service for eco upon return to the front galley. so business class service must not "ruin" the service.
it really depends on the effectivity of the crew. especially on the flights NUE-ZRH (short hop around 40 minutes on a ERJ145 with 1 FA) i have seen so many different approaches of service. some FA do a real personal (but very, very slow) service, taking the drink order of each biz pax, returning to the galley, preparing the drink(s) individually, returning to every pax with only their drink on a tablet. (quite a long procedure before handing out the meal). if they make use of this strategy (and only 7-9 biz pax on board) they are not able to start drink service to the Y travelling passengers.
other FA use a trolley, handing out the meal first and serve the drink from the trolley which is much, much, much faster and for me not necessarily less "biz-class-like" :-)

CHris

LHWolf

[QUOTE=The serving FA immediately asked every coach pax for their second beverage wish, so everybody was invited to have two drinks.[/QUOTE]


This seems to be standard now, I experienced it on all of my last flights.

^ ^

PhilUSA

That is a nice article in deed. I like the images as well.

Nice commuter plane, I agree and I am sure our beloved LH and daughters will come up with decent service products for this aircraft over time.

MCL

Same for me. Came back yesterday from AMS to MUC - and like usual C was fully booked on a CR1. So let's hope that this improvement is not only valid for CR9.

Cheers,
MCL