Proving its metal
The passenger CRJ200 program was part of Bombardier’s Canadian Regional Jets program, which was launched in 1989 and saw the 200 version enter into service six years later. The program was a commercial success, thanks to the aircraft’s ability to connect regional airports at jet speed, outpacing its turboprop competition. Back then, props ruled the regional skies, and airlines snapped up the regional jet to the tune of around 2,000 total orders. Some passengers groused about the aircraft’s cramped cabin, pilots complained about its sluggish climb rate, but carriers loved the CRJ200’s economics and opened their check books.
But every aircraft has a life span, and, as the CRJ200s aged, carriers began moving towards newer and larger regional jets. Bombardier was faced with the challenge of enhancing the value of the 200s that were being retired.
Adding a second life to passenger aircraft lowers the costs of upgrading. The most common route is freighter conversions, but while a handful of CRJ200s had been converted to bulk-load configuration, there wasn’t a precedent for converting smaller jets such as the CRJ200 [pictured] to full freighter configuration – that is, a freighter with a large cargo door and an efficient cargo loading system.
When Bombardier first approached AEI about the project, the conversion company was of the same mindset as many of its later skeptics. It was hard to envision sufficient demand for such a product to justify a full program. Eventually, AEI and Bombardier agreed to jointly study a conversion program, but by the end of the initial phase, Bombardier had stepped back, leaving it mostly in AEI’s hands.
The launch customer for AEI’s CRJ200 conversion program was U.S.-based IFL Group – a Part 135 and Part 121 carrier that flies throughout North and Central America, the Caribbean and South America. Their line of work often entails flying over bad weather and on long charter routes. CRJ aircraft have “made their mark” in the highly-competitive regional airline secetor, said IFL’s president Michael Church in advance of the first delivery. “We’re confident that will continue in our air freight business.”
The first conversion has not yet been added to IFL Group’s certificate, but the carrier has already taken redelivery of its second. According to our sister publication, Cargo Facts, IFL plans to add two more CRJ200 freighters in the near future.
“The hunt for the CRJ started when we were looking for a ‘bridge airplane’ that would take us between the end of the 737-400 conversions and the beginning of the 737-800s,” Convey explained. “The proposed CRJ200 conversion program was simply a filler to keep the AEI’s conversion lines going.”
But well before AEI was doing its homework, Cascade Aerospace had already introduced a CRJ200 “package freighter” that lacked the AEI conversion’s larger door, but nonetheless pointed to the aircraft’s potential as a freighter.
First introduced into service in 2006 by West Atlantic (then known as West Air Sweden), the Cascade E-Class conversion featured vertical nets to restrain the cargo and utilized the existing passenger and cargo doors. West Atlantic added the CRJ freighters to its fleet for a very specific customer: Norway Post – the postal service of Norway.
“A lot of our business is centered around the transport of mail, and our clients move their mail in trolleys that look like the trolleys that supermarkets use to stock their shelves,” explained the carrier’s chief commercial officer, Russell Ladkin. The trolleys are about 1.5 feet in length, and 1.5 feet wide, and up to five feet tall. “We didn’t need a large cargo door to move our customer’s product,” he said. This worked well with the CRJ because, at three feet wide, the CRJ200 door can accommodate a 31.50-inch × 47.24-inch euro-pallet.
What Norway Post needed most was speed and range, and that’s exactly what the CRJ200 offered over the BAe ATP turboprop freighters already in the West Atlantic fleet. Since most European routes are too short to necessitate jet speed, demand was limited, but those initial acquisitions were an indication of the aircraft’s utility.
Unlike most of Europe, Norway has un uncompromising geography with outposts separated by thousands of kilometers. West Atlantic flies from Oslo to Tromsø, near the northern tip of the country, traversing “lots of ugly geography in between,” Ladkin explained. “We even go on into a place called Svalbard which is the northernmost mainstream settlement in the world; it’s in the Arctic Circle. The CRJ was really the only airplane that could do that.”
His experience with Cascade’s package freighter version has convinced Ladkin that AEI’s CRJ200 conversion would be successful across emerging markets where cities are often far apart, and infrastructure is minimal. “When I do the economics on a CRJ, it’s really no more expensive than an ATR on anything over 400 miles, and you get that jet speed which is very useful over longer distances,” he said. However, he cautioned that Europe isn’t “ideal CRJ territory.”
Ultimately, Cascade’s CRJ package freighter conversion has failed to catch on. Only nine have been delivered to date, including three to West Atlantic, suggesting that it isn’t enough to simply take out the seats and install nets.