Development
The aircraft was based on the Canadair Challenger design, which was purchased by Canadair from Bill Lear in 1976.
The wide fuselage of the Challenger which seats 2 passengers on each side of the aisle suggested early on to Canadair officials that it would be straightforward to stretch the aircraft to accomomodate more seats, and there was a plan for a Challenger 610E, which would have had seating for 24 passengers. That lengthening did not occur, the effort being canceled in 1981, but the idea did not disappear.
In 1987, studies began for a much more ambitious stretched configuration, leading to the formal launch of the Canadair Regional Jet program in the spring of 1989. The "Canadair" name was retained despite the fact that Bombardier had bought out the company. The first of three development machines for the initial CRJ100 performed its first flight on 10 May 1991, though one of the prototypes was lost in a spin mishap in July 1993. The type obtained certification in late 1992, with initial delivery to customers late in that year.
As of August 2006 a total of 938 CRJ100 and CRJ200 aircraft (all variants) are in airline service, with 8 further firm orders. Major operators include Air Nostrum (35, Plus 7 orders), Air Wisconsin (70), Atlantic Southeast Airlines (110), Comair (40), Jazz Aviation (43), Lufthansa CityLine (26), Mesa Airlines (60), Mesaba Airlines (19), Pinnacle Airlines (145), PSA Airlines (35), Republic Airways Holdings (20), and SkyWest Airlines (159). Some 20 other airlines also operate smaller fleets of the type.
Read more about this topic: Bombardier CRJ200
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the “philosophic temper,” in short, for which a survival of query will be still the salt of truth, even in the most absolutely ascertained knowledge.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“The Cairo conference ... is about a complicated web of education and employment, consumption and poverty, development and health care. It is also about whether governments will follow where women have so clearly led them, toward safe, simple and reliable choices in family planning. While Cairo crackles with conflict, in the homes of the world the orthodoxies have been duly heard, and roundly ignored.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Other nations have tried to check ... the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”
—John Louis O’Sullivan (1813–1895)