Small Planes?
 

Is it near impossible to take a big plane on a domestic (U.S.) flight nowadays? My wife hates flying and greatly prefers bigger planes. We searched flights going from the West and Midwest to the East Coast and even flights from one coast to the other (SEA to JFK, for example) and they all seem to be various hopper flights on planes like the RJ-900 or the smallish 737 at the largest (and even those are short).

Do airlines just not fly the bigger jets like the 747 or the 757 domestically anymore, except maybe LAX to LGA? It seems like you pretty much have to be flying transcon to fly a bigger jet now, no? It also seems pretty much useless to fly first class on the smaller jets too, because the seats are barely bigger and the service isn't that much different ($500-$1K extra for a bottle of water and an extra smile, no thanks).

Clearly you've never been on small planes. :D While the CRJs are small jets, 737 are certainly not. A Cessna Caravan or Beechcraft 1900 are small commercial airplanes. :D

The 737 and A320 have the range to fly pretty much all domestic routes (apart from a couple of exceptions) and smaller planes but more frequent flights is generally preferred by customers. A 747 is just waste of good airplane on those routes.

I've flown in DH beavers and Cessna's for both work and pleasure for about 20 years (: I was referring to large-scale commercial flying. I shouldn't say the A320 or 737 are "small" either, I'm thinking of anything smaller than six seats across in coach as small. It just seems to be very difficult to find a route that flies even the 737/A320 size anymore, and especially hard to find one with "lie down" seating. It also seems difficult to find a route that flies the 737 or A320 all the way unless it's maybe CA to NY. MPLS to LGA or JFK? Good luck, it seems they are all "stick of gum" jets, even from SEA.

Those Delta 757s with lie flat seating must be invisible

You mean like Delta One? Their own website says the service is only JFK-LAX, JFK-SFO, DCA-LAX, or BOS-SFO. I'm talking about flights that don't just originate in California or New York area.

It varies with the airline and the route. I can usually find a 757 or larger when I really want one. It's also good to look for internationally configured aircraft being repositioned as domestic flights. But if you have a specific airline or route that can make it tough. The airlines have discovered the efficiency of flying the smaller long haul aircraft (late series 737 and A320/21 crafts). The seat cost is lower and they are easier to fill. It can be funny to watch a heavy loaded one trying to gain altitude.

The LAX departure for example calls for a Westerly departure Iver the Pacific for 5 miles then circle back over LAX headed east but if you watch the flight path departing LAX you will see many of those smaller jets cannot gain the requisite altitude to fly over LAX when coming back so they usually return south of LAX. On the Western departure they are often still gaining altitude long after a 757 would have been in cruise.

That is funny! It's all about the cost savings for the airline, and the majority of customers don't care I guess.

The tighter Y seat pitch and width being used more and more even in widebodies makes it sort of academic whether I'm on a larger or smaller mainline jet...the in-seat experience isn't likely to be much different in many cases.

Some of the RJs are dreadful (e.g., the CR2 aka Devil's Chariot) but a few can be decent. Personally the single seat side on the ER4, particularly the exit row, is one of my favorite Y seats across the board.

I haven't flown the route in a long time. Who flies smaller than 737/A320 SEA to NYC? Kayak doesn't show any.

Of course it is all about profit, and I would expect nothing less from a company. I don't know of any company that would intentionally lose money to appeal to 1 or 2 passengers.

Why would you run a company out of nostalgia instead of profits? I miss flying on a widebody DEN-COS back in the 80's, with sometimes only 20 passengers. I miss catching the 777 DEN-ORD-DEN pre merger....

I would love nothing more than to see more mainline aircraft out of my home airport on United, but United does not operate based on what COSPILOT wants, they operate on what makes money.

I could fly Frontier out of COS all on mainline, but no thank you.

No such thing as LAX to LGA.

I just did a search on all flights today out of SEA on EF. By far the majority are A32x/737 series. To say it's hard to find a route with even a 737/32x is ridiculous.

I was wondering about that...

Semi-OT trivia: how often do airlines operate a route only one-way? Is anybody currently doing it into any of these popular airports with short-ish runways? DCA, MDW, LGA, etc.

Anyway, the plane size is a red herring once you're bigger than the Barbie jets like the CR2. It's all about how the airline configures it. Spirit flies nice big A320s...and they jam about 900 people into them. :p

IMHO, the best short-haul plane in the sky is the E170/190. It's significantly smaller than the Boeings and Airbii people usually prefer. No middle seats, and most operators have it configured approximately 18" x 32". If there's an F cabin, it's 1x2, making the "A" seats a very nice ride.

Embraer 175 is not a short-haul jet by any means: SkyWest runs it SEA<-->MKE and PDX<-->STL, both of which are close to 1700 miles

but I fully agree it's the best ride in the 70- to 100-seat jet category ^

I don't think one-ways are all that common any more

True...I guess I just think of midcons as short-haul and intercontinental as long-haul. :)

I fly MCI-PDX on these planes semi-often. Sometimes the buy-up to F is about $100 and it's a very nice ride.