It’s not often that an airline decides to design its own airplane.
On Sunday, United Airlines Holdings Inc. will fly customers on a new regional jet crafted to its exact specifications, an aircraft that comes with 10 first class seats. By putting premium perches on a small regional jet with a total of only 50 seats, United hopes to close an amenities gap for a highly competitive group of travelers from smaller cities to its Chicago and Newark, New Jersey hubs.
From the outside, the jet looks like every other Bombardier Inc. CRJ-700, a 70-seat workhorse flown widely across the regional airline industry. Inside, however, the plane is a brand new type, called a CRJ-550, from which United has removed 20 seats — a counterintuitive move in an era when airlines are eagerly stuffing more seats on their airplanes to help reduce costs and goose profits.
«It’s kind of an out-of-the-box project,» said Ankit Gupta, United’s domestic network vice president, conceding that he was skeptical at first due to the lost revenue from flying with fewer seats. «Your immediate gut reaction is ‘it’s going to be difficult but you say let’s go through and give it a fair shot.'»
On the CRJ-550, United has installed four sizable luggage closets and positioned a self-serve refreshment center for the 10 passengers riding in first class. (Forget about grabbing your own booze: alcohol distribution remains the flight attendant’s purview.) There’s Gogo Inc. Wi-Fi — albeit the slower air-to-ground version — and 20 extra-legroom seats in addition to 20 economy seats in the back. The plane also has larger overhead bins to hold roller bags.
The goal of the new jet is to connect international passengers who prefer to fly first class all the way from home, say if they live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, or Tulsa, Oklahoma, and not just when they board their connecting flight at a United hub. For many of its short regional routes, United has been flying a far larger quantity of single-class 50-seat jets than American and Delta. Many of these smaller cities will soon see the CRJ-550, including Allentown, Pennsylvania and Bentonville, Arkansas.
United sees the luggage closets as a key feature to lure business travelers, because the new plane means the end of gate checking your bags. Sarah Murphy, a senior vice president who manages United Express, said multiple tests «with actual people with bags and a stroller and car seats» have shown the CRJ-550’s ability to quash that dreaded jetway inconvenience.
«Every bag is going to get on,» Murphy said, sitting aboard a new CRJ-550 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Oct. 17. «It’s going to create that moment where you go ‘Ah, even with a tight connection I’m going to be able to go with my bag and not wait for the bag to come up.'»
United plans to take on a fleet of 54 CRJ-550s into 2021, and is targeting an initial 26 markets with the plane, growing over time to as many as 35. At first, the new jets will fly between 15 smaller cities and O’Hare, later expanding to six more through early January. Service at Newark starts in February, offering flights between the New Jersey hub and four markets. United’s Washington-Dulles airport will also see a few CRJ-550 flights, with the longest route for the new jet scheduled thus far between that hub and St. Louis…
