Slimming down the jumbo jet

More and more airlines are discovering the economies of smaller scale by flying regional jets on some routes.

TAMPA - University of Miami student Megan Salazar flies at least once a month between school and her home in Brandon. She sighs with relief when the plane is a small jet instead of a turboprop.

"I don't like the ones with the little propellers," she says, waiting at Tampa International Airport for an AirTran JetConnect flight to Miami. "They fly low over the Everglades. It's so bumpy and so loud, it feels like it's going to break down right there."

But the little jets annoy business travel writer Joe Brancatelli. He had to duck to keep from bumping his head as he squeezed into a tight seat for a 21/2-hour flight from New York to Jacksonville this month on a Delta Connection jet.

"You have to bend down to walk through the aisle, it's cold, it's noisy compared to a regular-size jet," Brancatelli said. "And for that, they charge me top dollar."

Like them or not, travelers find themselves more and more likely to fly regional jets.

The jets, ranging in size from 37 to 90 seats, first appeared in the United States a decade ago and became the fastest-growing type of commercial aircraft.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, regional jets have been the only kind of planes airlines added to their fleets as they struggle to match the supply of seats with dwindling demand.

The economics are obvious in smaller cities, where airlines can't fill a regular-size plane. But the numbers work on busier routes, too.

If an airline can sell 30 tickets to high-paying business travelers, it makes more sense to fly a 50-seat jet that costs half as much to operate as a 119-seat Boeing 737, said Darryl Jenkins, head of the Aviation Institute at George Washington University in Washington.

"You skim the cream if you can get all the high-yield passengers," he said. "With bigger planes, you have to sell the last seats for very little money."

Regional jets made up just one out of every 17 domestic flights in February 1999, according to airline consultants Global Aviation Associates in Washington. Three years later, the number was nearly one out of five, a threefold increase.

The small jets were rarely seen at Tampa International Airport as recently as a year ago. Now, Delta Connection flies regional jets to Columbus, Ohio, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Delta's hubs in Atlanta and Cincinnati.

Four of the five daily nonstop flights from Tampa to Tallahassee, all on AirTran Airways, are small jets flown for the carrier by Air Wisconsin under the name AirTran JetConnect. So are three of Tampa International's 15 nonstops to Miami.

Airline experts disagree over whether the boom will continue.

Raymond James & Associates analyst James Parker is bullish, in part because pilots at US Airways, United and American approved new contracts that relax restrictions on regional jets.

Affiliated airlines that pay lower salaries fly the smaller jets under names such as Delta Connection and Continental Express. Worried their jobs would be farmed out, most major airline pilots have rules in their contracts, called "scope clauses," that limit the number of small jets or the size of the jets the affiliated carriers can fly.

But with the industry in its worst financial slump ever, big airlines are winning new contracts that allow more regional jet flying. US Airways, which emerged from bankruptcy court last month, can add up to 465 regional jets, including some with as many as 76 seats.

"Scope clauses held back RJs a hell of a lot," Parker said. "They've reduced the profit of major airlines . . . because they had to use big aircraft and offer a lot of cheap seats."

But another analyst says the new labor contracts will have the opposite effect on regional jet growth.

Big cuts in wages and benefits will let major carriers reduce their costs as much as 30 percent, said JPMorgan analyst Jamie Baker. That will narrow the affiliates' cost advantage, he said, and make it attractive for the majors to fly more of their own larger jets.

Is the rapid growth of regional jets good news for travelers? That depends on what kind of plane the small jet is replacing.

Stacked up against a turboprop, the regional jet wins every time. Gone is the jarring roar of propellers beating the air, so passengers can talk in conversational tones. Regional jets have big-jet amenities, such as overhead bins, air conditioning on the ground and even drink minicarts.

But the most important feature for travelers like Salazar, the University of Miami student, is that the small jets seem more modern and safer, though turboprop operators say their planes' safety records are about the same as those for large jets.

For travelers accustomed to flying on a full-size jet, the smaller, all-coach regional jet isn't a good substitute. Frequent fliers miss upgrades into the wider seats, extra legroom and free drinks in first class.

And for all their bells and whistles, the 50-seat regional jets are about the same size inside as turboprops. Because they're faster and fly up to 1,500 miles without refueling, travelers can find themselves in cramped quarters for longer flights.

"There's certainly a comfort issue," said Michael Boyd, an aviation consultant in Evergreen, Colo.

Despite the occasional grumbling, regional jet fleets have grown steadily since Delta Connection carrier Comair started flying the first new jets in 1993.

The CJR was a stretched-out version of Canadair Ltd.'s Challenger 601 business jet, designed to fly 50 passengers up to 1,000 miles at top speeds of nearly 488 mph - much farther and faster than turboprops.

Comair and Atlantic Southeast Airlines, both since bought out by Delta, aggressively added CJRs through the '90s. Almost every major airline began stocking up on regional jets, either the Canadair or those manufactured by competitor Embraer.

They largely used the new jets to feed customers from smaller cities into connecting hubs, where they flew on the major carriers' big jets.

Sometimes the regional jets replaced turboprops. Airlines found that when a regional jet entered a market, customers fled the turboprops. An informal customer survey by Delta showed its passengers would drive two to five hours to avoid flying a plane with propellers.

But more often, major carriers deployed regional jets on routes that were too long for turboprops. Their range and speed allowed airlines to test new markets on the cheap or add flights on existing routes to give customers, especially business travelers, more options.

When air travel plummeted after Sept. 11, 2001, carriers replaced full-size jets in certain cities with smaller jets that have a similar look and feel to what passengers were used to flying.

"We put RJs into markets to hold our place and maintain service for customers where there wasn't enough traffic to support a big jet," said Steve Forsythe, a spokesman for Delta Connection.

With airlines running up huge losses, regional jets may be the only planes they fly that make money, said Parker, the Raymond James analyst. He published a comparison showing the economics of flying a Boeing 737 with 119 seats compared with a 50-seat regional jet.

The 737 costs would lose $1,589 with a load of 76 passengers, he said. Because it costs half as much to operate, the regional jet would make a $721 profit carrying 43 passengers on the same route.

Recent schedule changes at Tampa International show a range of regional jet strategies.

Delta traditionally flew only big jets, mostly double-aisle Boeing 767s, back and forth to its huge hub in Atlanta. But TIA's largest carrier now uses a Delta Connection regional jet for the thinly traveled last flight of the day to Atlanta and back.

And last fall, Delta began using a regional jet to fly from Tampa to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, for years the exclusive domain of US Airways.

"They start with an RJ, because they know they can get their own frequent fliers, and try to take business from US Airways," said Louis Miller, Tampa International's executive director. "Once they get a foothold, they'll upgrade to a full-size jet."

In November, AirTran brought regional jets to its routes within Florida. The airline now flies a mix of full-size and small jets from Tampa to Tallahassee and Miami.

"Our demand is spread out throughout the day," AirTran spokesman Tad Hutcheson said. "First and foremost, we're interested in profitability of the markets. We've been able to make it work better with more frequencies . . . and we're much more pleased with the loads."

- Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.

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