In the Soviet Union, air tickets were relatively inexpensive, and most of the passenger traffic was carried out by medium-haul liners. A flight from city to city at a distance of 500 to 1000 kilometers cost 30-40 rubles, which, of course, was higher than railway tariffs, but it was affordable for an ordinary worker or engineer. In the early nineties, air carriers began to feel a systemic crisis that hit other areas of the country's economy. Reliable and time-tested machines designed for regional lines turned out to be unclaimed, they quickly grew old. Flights have become a luxury accessible only to the nouveau riche.
The design of new airliners with a capacity of 50-80 passengers with a flight range of a couple of thousand kilometers was frozen. Therefore, when the need arose for such aircraft again, airlines turned to foreign manufacturers of aircraft, in particular, to the Canadian company Bombardier.
Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) is a linear range of passenger aircraft designed for the comfortable transportation of 50-100 passengers on short and medium lines. The climatic conditions of the country of origin are close to ours. Low fuel consumption, high performance, ease of retraining of pilots and technical personnel created competitive advantages that contribute to the rapid promotion of these airliners on the Russian air transportation market.
The first model of the Canadair Regional Jet series, put on the wing in 1991, received the CRJ-100 index. Canadian designers deliberately abandoned the wide-body layout popular in recent decades, opting for cost-effectiveness. To improve it, four years later the aircraft was modified by installing General Electric engines CF-34B1 instead of CF-34A1. It underwent an upgrade and avionics, flights in difficult weather conditions became possible. The number of seats remained the same - 50, but such large-scale design changes were reflected in the new index - Canadair Regional Jet-200, although outwardly it was difficult to distinguish it from the "hundred".
The interior is aesthetically pleasing and has a high level of comfort, the seats are very comfortable and have leather upholstery. The engines of the aircraft of the Canadair Regional Jet series are located on pylons on the sides of the rear of the fuselage, and this arrangement, first used on the Caravel, ensures low noise.
In the early nineties, the joystick type pilot handles were a technically feasible version of the controls, but the Canadian manufacturer stopped at the helm columns familiar to pilots all over the world, which increased the export potential of the new machine. Alarms have been replaced by functional ergonomic multi-color displays.
Like any successful development, the Canadair Regional Jet series aircraft have a high modification potential. Design features allowed to change flight characteristics and passenger capacity. The model line has replenished with new airliners with a large number of seats and an increased practical radius of routes. Thus, the Canadair Regional Jet-900, created in 2001, takes on board almost twice as many passengers as the base model CRJ-100. Of course, in order to make this possible, the length of the fuselage had to be increased, and with it the wing span and engine power. Perhaps the needs of the air transportation market will cause the emergence of new modifications of the aircraft of the Canadian company of regional jet liners.