How about a little regional carrier love for this installment of Vintage Airline Seat Maps?
Appearing below is the seat map for a United Express British Aerospace BAE 146-200 seen flying the skies in 1998. I enjoyed flying on this bird, as the interior was nearly equivalent to a 737. And the #avgeek in me loved the high-wing, four-engine exterior.
This aircraft style is still flying these days, but renamed as the Avro RJ. I flew on a SWISS stretched version a couple of years ago from Frankfurt to Zurich.
You’d likely find me in a window seat near the wing, such as 5A or 6A.
Where would you sit?
Here’s an added bonus pic of a BAe 146-200 I snapped at Chicago O’Hare sometime around 1990 (Air Wisconsin, I believe):
Related posts:
Kind of interesting bird. The 4 engines gave this bird great abilities and made me a drop less fearfull of landing and takeoff at Lugano. There are no thrust reversers, I believe the air drag on some tail fins is all there is.
For some reason that I’m not aware of, this was my favorite plane as a kid, even though I didn’t get to fly one until I was 25, on the admittedly sweet route of LCY-DUB
Ah, the memories of this on MSN-ORD and other legs So much better than the CRJ
@Brad: Oh yes… way better than a CRJ.
@Ryan: I loved the 727, too.
I remember flying that aircraft with UA SFO-RNO back in the 90s. No idea what seat I was in. PSA ran them on their short-lived Concord-LAX route around that time, too, as my father would use that service to get down to a submarine base in San Diego.
Never got to fly one, but always loved the look of those little guys! Your pic does have the tail end of my all time favorite vintage UA bird, the 727. I don’t know really why the 727 was my favorite, nostalgia I guess.
Remember when I was just a wee 6 year old in 2000 flying one of these from BOI-DEN, then a 757 to MCO from there. I was travelling with my mother and younger sister, my sister and I on the 2 side of the plane and my mother on the 3. Took a lot of convincing by my mother to get the two sitting next to her to trade seats with us young ones.
I flew one from ORD to ATW for work back in the 90’s. It was a great ride although too short for me 🙂
I guess I’m lucky, because of living in Europe ;). Flew this great plane with Swiss last year on a trip to Germany. Cost me 3.5 hours more (had to do Amsterdam-Zurich-Munich, while there were direct flights available), but so worth the time!
So far, I’ve flown this wonderful bird 5 or 6 times. Every time I try to sit around row 6: nice view of the engines, while still being able to look at the scenery.
Bad news for me, though: the Wikipedia page of Swiss states ‘On 11 March 2009, Swiss announced that, in 2014, it plans to gradually replace the current Avro RJ100 fleet with aircraft of the Bombardier CSeries. The replacement of the current 20 aircraft is planned to take two years’ 🙁 That leaves CityJet, TNT Airways and Brussels Airlines as main operators in Europe.
Many people here in The Netherlands are sad to see the MD11 leave KLM’s fleet, I honestly couldn’t care less. But my beloved Jumbolino…
Not sure if anyone know or remember this, after Air Wiscousin left ORD, NW (operated by Mesaba) did use BAe146 on MSP-ORD-MSP for a short time too.
@ Jorg
Had the pleasure of an SN Brussels RJ-85 from Brussels-Venice-Brussels. Perhaps LCY is one of the better places to fly out of, especially with CityJet. Hopefully, I will be living in London for the next few years, so an ARJ trip from LCY may be in my future!
That’s probably your best bet though, into LCY. The ARJ-100 is the largest aircraft that can serve there. Unfortunately, CityJet crowds their ARJs with 6 abreast on the inside.
I loved the NWA regional Avros. Noisy and slow, but a generous 19 in seat width in coach!
These aircraft were cool. I was an attendant on these for about 4 and a half years. They were built for short take and landings. I won’t fly anymore, but it was fun back in the late 80’s early 90’s.