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Regional Jet Guide
Every regional jet in Tailwinds compared: seats, range, lease cost, fuel burn, and per-seat economics. Build profitable thin routes and hub feed.
Regional jets solve a specific problem: routes with real demand, but not enough of it to fill a 150-seat narrow-body. In Tailwinds that describes a huge share of the map — secondary cities, short cross-border hops, and above all hub feed, the short flights that funnel connecting passengers into your hub for onward long-haul travel.
Per-seat costs run higher than larger jets; that is the price of right-sizing. A regional jet is not competing with an A320 on cost per seat — it is competing with the empty seats the A320 would fly on a thin route. Judged that way, the category is one of the most reliably profitable in the game.
How to choose
The E-Jet and CRJ families cover the 70–130 seat band; the E2 generation offers materially better burn for a higher lease. At the small end, 50-seaters only make sense on very thin or very short missions where nothing bigger could break even. As always: pick the seat count the route can fill, not the one with the prettiest efficiency number.
All 26 aircraft at a glance
Figures are the game's actual values. Fuel cost assumes the base fuel price of $1.20/litre — the live market price in your save drifts between roughly half and nearly double that, which is why fuel hedging matters.
| Aircraft | Seats | Range | Cruise | Lease/wk | Price | Fuel/100km | Fuel/seat-km | Fuel rank | Lease/seat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dornier 328JET | 34 | 1,665 km | 800 km/h | $17K | $7M | 160 L | 6.82¢ | 24 / 26 | $500 |
| Embraer ERJ-135 | 37 | 3,241 km | 800 km/h | $15K | $6M | 138 L | 5.39¢ | 22 / 26 | $405 |
| Yakovlev Yak-40 | 40 | 1,800 km | 800 km/h | $7K | $3M | 280 L | 10.13¢ | 26 / 26 | $175 |
| Embraer ERJ-145 | 50 | 2,870 km | 800 km/h | $19K | $8M | 175 L | 5.08¢ | 20 / 26 | $380 |
| CRJ-200 | 52 | 3,048 km | 800 km/h | $12K | $5M | 165 L | 4.59¢ | 16 / 26 | $231 |
| CRJ-700 | 78 | 3,716 km | 800 km/h | $29K | $12M | 220 L | 4.09¢ | 12 / 26 | $372 |
| Embraer ERJ-170 | 80 | 3,735 km | 800 km/h | $35K | $18M | 207 L | 3.75¢ | 7 / 26 | $438 |
| Fokker 70 | 85 | 3,410 km | 800 km/h | $17K | $7M | 315 L | 5.37¢ | 21 / 26 | $200 |
| Fokker F28 Fellowship | 85 | 2,700 km | 800 km/h | $12K | $5M | 389 L | 6.63¢ | 23 / 26 | $141 |
| Embraer E175 | 88 | 3,735 km | 800 km/h | $60K | $30M | 232 L | 3.82¢ | 8 / 26 | $682 |
| Antonov An-148-100B | 89 | 5,100 km | 800 km/h | $32K | $18M | 251 L | 4.09¢ | 13 / 26 | $360 |
| CRJ-900 | 90 | 2,876 km | 800 km/h | $43K | $18M | 250 L | 4.03¢ | 11 / 26 | $478 |
| Embraer E175-E2 | 90 | 3,735 km | 800 km/h | $70K | $35M | 199 L | 3.21¢ | 3 / 26 | $778 |
| Mitsubishi SpaceJet M90 | 92 | 3,770 km | 800 km/h | $80K | $40M | 235 L | 3.70¢ | 5 / 26 | $870 |
| Tupolev Tu-134 | 96 | 3,000 km | 800 km/h | $20K | $8M | 453 L | 6.85¢ | 25 / 26 | $208 |
| COMAC ARJ21-700 | 97 | 3,700 km | 800 km/h | $44K | $22M | 256 L | 3.82¢ | 9 / 26 | $448 |
| CRJ-1000 | 104 | 3,004 km | 800 km/h | $51K | $22M | 281 L | 3.92¢ | 10 / 26 | $490 |
| Sukhoi Superjet 100 | 108 | 4,578 km | 800 km/h | $56K | $28M | 347 L | 4.66¢ | 17 / 26 | $519 |
| Sukhoi Superjet SJ-100 | 108 | 3,000 km | 800 km/h | $75K | $38M | 355 L | 4.77¢ | 19 / 26 | $694 |
| Avro RJ85 | 112 | 3,300 km | 800 km/h | $19K | $8M | 345 L | 4.47¢ | 15 / 26 | $170 |
| BAe 146-200 | 112 | 3,650 km | 800 km/h | $17K | $7M | 365 L | 4.73¢ | 18 / 26 | $152 |
| Embraer E190 | 114 | 4,537 km | 800 km/h | $55K | $24M | 293 L | 3.73¢ | 6 / 26 | $482 |
| Embraer E190-E2 | 114 | 5,460 km | 800 km/h | $80K | $40M | 242 L | 3.08¢ | 2 / 26 | $702 |
| Fokker 100 | 122 | 3,170 km | 800 km/h | $22K | $9M | 355 L | 4.22¢ | 14 / 26 | $180 |
| Embraer E195 | 124 | 4,260 km | 800 km/h | $60K | $26M | 302 L | 3.53¢ | 4 / 26 | $484 |
| Embraer E195-E2 | 146 | 5,600 km | 800 km/h | $89K | $45M | 265 L | 2.63¢ | 1 / 26 | $610 |
Six regional jets that earn their keep
Twenty-six types are listed above, and most of them are wrong for you in any given week. Six repay the money: one for an empty balance sheet, one for a mature network, one that flatters itself badly on the stat table, and three that quietly do the work. Match seats to demand, range to mission, and only then argue about price.
Fokker 100 — the first jet you can actually afford
Nine million dollars buys one outright, which is precisely the wrong move when your bank shows ten. Lease instead at $22,000 a week and you have handed yourself 409 weeks — close to eight years of turns — before the payments add up to the sticker price. In the meantime you are flying 122 seats, the third-largest cabin in the regional fleet behind only the E195 and the E195-E2, both of which cost several times as much. Fuel is the surprise: 4.22 cents per seat-kilometre undercuts the Sukhoi Superjet 100 at $56,000 a week and the SJ-100 at $75,000.
What leaves your account each week is lease plus maintenance — $22,000 and $27,800, so $49,800, which spread over 122 seats is $408 a seat. Only the Avro RJ85, the BAe 146-200 and the Fokker F28 hold a seat for less, and every one of them burns more fuel. The catch is where it can go. Range stops at 3,170 kilometres, so nothing long. It wants 5,900 feet of runway, so nothing small. And 122 seats is a great many to fill on a thin spoke, where you pay $408 for the empty ones just the same. Give it dense secondary-city pairs, not hub feed.
Embraer ERJ-170 — the hub-feed workhorse
If one type on this list is mispriced in your favour, it is this one. Eighty seats, 3,735 kilometres, a 4,300-foot field requirement, $35,000 a week. Now look directly at the E175 sitting two places below it in the fuel order: 88 seats, the identical 3,735-kilometre range, and Embraer wants $60,000. That is $25,000 a week for eight extra seats — $3,125 per seat per week — while burning slightly more fuel, 3.82 cents against 3.75, and demanding 400 feet more runway. There is no reading of that trade where the E175 wins.
Maintenance seals it. At $22,000 a week, nothing on this list with eighty seats or more is billed less. Lease and maintenance together come to $57,000, or $713 a seat, and eighty seats is close to the natural size of a feed market — big enough to be worth the slot, small enough to fill on a Tuesday morning. The 4,300-foot runway opens secondary fields the E195 cannot touch at 5,900 feet. Range is the honest weakness: 3,735 kilometres rules out the long thin cross-border work, so pair it with something with legs. Buy at $18M once cash flow is genuinely steady, which the lease equals in 514 weeks.
Antonov An-148-100B — long legs on a small budget
Sooner or later a pair you want sits 5,000 kilometres apart and most of this list simply cannot reach it. The An-148 does 5,100 kilometres, and only two regional jets go further: the E190-E2 at 5,460 and the E195-E2 at 5,600, leasing at $80,000 and $89,000. This one leases at $32,000 and buys for $18M. It carries 89 people at 4.09 cents per seat-kilometre, which is mid-table overall but better than both Sukhois and both BAe designs, none of which fly nearly as far.
Set it beside the other types that reach past 4,500 kilometres and the gap is embarrassing. The Superjet 100 manages 4,578 kilometres for a $56,000 lease and 4.66 cents; the E190 does 4,537 for $55,000. The Antonov beats both on distance for a little over half the weekly money, and with $24,200 of maintenance its fixed bill is $56,200 a week, $631 a seat. Two cautions. It needs 6,200 feet of runway, among the longest requirements here, so major airports only. And fuel efficiency you can shrug at when the market sits at $1.20 a litre becomes the whole argument when the market drifts towards double that — on a full-length sector, 4.09 cents is a lot of litres.
BAe 146-200 — the short-field key
On a 3,900-foot runway your choices collapse to two, and only one of them carries a useful number of people. The 146-200 puts 112 seats into fields that lock out almost everything else on this page: the Avro RJ85 needs 4,000 feet, the ERJ-170 4,300, the E195 a full 5,900. The only type that lands shorter is the Yakovlev Yak-40 at 3,300 feet, which seats 40 and burns 10.13 cents per seat-kilometre — nearly four times the E195-E2's 2.63, and the worst figure in the game by a distance.
The money is close to trivial: $17,000 a week, $7M outright, and with $26,400 of maintenance a fixed cost of $43,400, or $388 a seat — the lowest weekly cost per seat of any regional jet here. Be disciplined about it, though. Where the runway allows an RJ85 instead, take the RJ85: 100 feet more concrete buys 4.47 cents rather than 4.73, and at 20,000 kilometres a week with a reasonably full cabin that 0.26-cent gap saves several thousand dollars against the $1,200 the Avro adds in lease and maintenance combined. Treat the 146 as a key rather than a fleet — it unlocks airports, and its 3,650-kilometre range means those spokes can be surprisingly long ones.
Embraer E195-E2 — the efficiency leader you grow into
Nothing else in the regional fleet comes near 2.63 cents per seat-kilometre. The E190-E2 is next at 3.08 and burns 17% more; the bottom of the table burns four times as much. Put that on a 5,600-kilometre sector — the longest reach available to any regional jet — with all 146 seats sold, and against a mid-table 4.09-cent aircraft you are roughly $11,900 better off per flight before you have sold a single ticket. That advantage grows every time the fuel market climbs above $1.20 a litre, which it does often, and by a lot.
Every cost column is the highest in the class: $89,000 a week, $45M to buy, $39,600 in maintenance. Held together that is $128,600 a week, $881 a seat — steep, but still less per seat than the E175-E2's $1,051 or the SpaceJet M90's $1,157, which is exactly the argument for it. Purchase takes 506 weeks of lease payments to justify, so lease until the network stops changing shape. The genuine hurdle is the cabin. A 146-seat aeroplane is not a regional aircraft on a thin spoke, and each empty seat still costs $881; it wants markets where a narrow-body is nearly right, or feed dense enough to fill twice daily. Pleasingly, 4,850 feet of runway is less than a 90-seat CRJ-900 needs, so the size costs you no airports. See route economics before you commit.
Embraer E175-E2 — the efficiency trap
Read the fuel column alone and this looks like the third-best aircraft in the game: 3.21 cents per seat-kilometre, beaten only by the two larger E2s. Read the lease column and it inverts. Seventy thousand dollars a week across 90 seats is $778 per seat, while the E195 asks $60,000 across 124 seats, which is $484 — you are paying 61% more per seat for the privilege, and the fuel edge you bought is 0.32 cents per seat-kilometre. On a 1,500-kilometre sector with every seat sold, that edge returns about $432 a flight.
To be fair to it, the sums are not one-sided. Maintenance is far kinder, $24,600 against the E195's $37,200, so the total weekly hold is $94,600 versus $97,200 and the E2 is genuinely $2,600 cheaper. The trouble is what the money buys: 90 seats at $1,051 each, against 124 at $784. Thirty-four extra seats of sellable revenue for slightly less money is not a close decision. Nor can it lean on distance to redeem the burn, since it stops at 3,735 kilometres where its bigger siblings reach 5,460 and 5,600, and efficiency pays hardest over range. One case justifies it: a 4,700-foot field the E195 cannot use, serving a market that truly tops out near 90 passengers. Outside that window, the stat table is flattering you.
Every type in the category
Reference entries for all 26, in the same order as the table. The table above carries seats, range, cruise speed, lease, price and fuel; these add the runway each type needs and its weekly maintenance bill.
Dornier 328JET
Jet-powered 328, one of the smallest regional jets ever in airline service.
Embraer ERJ-135
Smallest ERJ family member. Good for very thin jet routes.
Yakovlev Yak-40
Tiny three-engine regional jet that opened jet service to small Soviet towns.
Embraer ERJ-145
Small regional jet, good for thin routes that need jet speed.
CRJ-200
The backbone of North American regionals. Low capacity but ubiquitous.
CRJ-700
Stretched CRJ with better economics per seat than the -200.
Embraer ERJ-170
First of the E-jet family. Comfortable twin-aisle-style interior.
Fokker 70
Short-body Fokker 100. Fuel-efficient and popular in European regionals.
Fokker F28 Fellowship
Dutch short-haul jet with built-in airstairs, forerunner of the Fokker 70/100.
Embraer E175
Versatile E-jet. Great range-to-size ratio for regional networks.
Antonov An-148-100B
Ukrainian regional jet with exceptional range for its class. Suited to CIS networks.
CRJ-900
Popular regional jet bridging the gap between turboprops and mainline aircraft.
Embraer E175-E2
Next-gen E175 with improved fuel burn. Better economics than the original.
Mitsubishi SpaceJet M90
Japan's regional jet entry with modern technology and efficient design.
Tupolev Tu-134
Soviet short-haul jet, glass-nosed navigator station and all. A Cold War regional staple.
COMAC ARJ21-700
China's first domestically produced regional jet. Growing presence on domestic routes.
CRJ-1000
Largest CRJ. High seat count in the regional jet class.
Sukhoi Superjet 100
Russian regional jet with competitive specs. Strong presence in CIS markets.
Sukhoi Superjet SJ-100
Import-substituted update of the Superjet 100 with Russian systems and engines.
Avro RJ85
Upgraded BAe 146 with FADEC engines. Quieter and more reliable than its predecessor.
BAe 146-200
Quiet quad-jet with exceptional short-field performance. Perfect for city airports.
Embraer E190
Larger E-jet with solid range, perfect for medium-thin routes.
Embraer E190-E2
Re-engined E190 with 17% better fuel burn. Best-in-class regional economics.
Fokker 100
Dutch narrow-body workhorse. Still flying on many regional routes worldwide.
Embraer E195
Largest of the original E-jet family. Bridges regional jets and narrow-bodies on medium-thin routes.
Embraer E195-E2
Next-gen E-jet with improved fuel efficiency. Bridges regional and narrow-body.