146 / ARJ production

AndyMinx · Post by **AndyMinx** » 10 Jun 2006, 13:40

Hey everyone,

Just a question I've thought of:

When was the last BAe 146/ RJX airliner built and who was it for etc?

Its just a little curiosity I've had.

Many thanks,

TobyV · Post by **TobyV** » 10 Jun 2006, 14:09

E2394 for Air Botnia, currently sotred at Filton I believe, the year would have been 2002. I have a photo of the workers at Woodford next to it in a book somewhere.

See http://www.smiliner.com and http://www.shockcone.co.uk/bae146

Toby

AndyMinx · Post by **AndyMinx** » 10 Jun 2006, 15:35

Thanks for that Toby, thought you might be the one to respond on that.

Does the tooling still exist for the airframes?

With BAe selling their stake in Airbus....one can only dream! :roll:

Cheers,

Post by **Garry Russell** » 10 Jun 2006, 16:44

Well if there was ever to be a British airliner built I hope it would be something new and not a 146/RJ

No point in reintroducing an updated thirty year old design.

Garry

TobyV · Post by **TobyV** » 10 Jun 2006, 16:49

Pretty sure the tooling for the RJ was broken up... I have heard rumours that WFD itself will be up for disposal in the not so distant future, which makes sense since I cant see what they'll have to do after the Nimrod program is complete. I guess Prestwick will handle any further work that needs doing or updates/mods to 'legacy' regional aircraft products?

AndyMinx · Post by **AndyMinx** » 10 Jun 2006, 17:26

The only problem with something new Garry is that it won't be 'new'.
We'd see an exact replica of the A318 given half a chance! :sad:

Why not take the existing 146; give it a shiney new glass cockpit, miniturised '777-style cabin', only have 2 engines this time for better efficiency and re-worked exterior for better aerodynamics?

Hows that sound? :dance:

Cheers,

TobyV · Post by **TobyV** » 10 Jun 2006, 17:29

Already been done Andy, and cancelled in favour of the A319 (and partly because BAe's economic situation was very poor, mainly due to to lots of 146s returned from lease when the airlines operating them failed).

To be fair, the RJX's cockpit was as modern as one could reasonably want it to be I think, perhaps not quite as swish as some of the new Embraer's or the latest wave of bizjets/microjets etc, but pretty functional.

AndyMinx · Post by **AndyMinx** » 10 Jun 2006, 17:33

Ok that thing kinda resembles a jet powered ATR...I like it!

Perhaps now is not the time to continue it with talk of fly-by-wire then!

I suppose anything new would be crushed by Embraer now anyway. :sad:

Cheers,

Chris Trott · Post by **Chris Trott** » 10 Jun 2006, 19:02

Shouldn't that be named the "126" instead of "146NRA"?

I would love to see BAe re-enter the regional market. Lord knows we need something with British uniqueness. All these Brazilian and Canadian twins are getting kinda old already.

Whatever happened to the days when -

1) A guy named Swearingen could build 1100+ turboprop airplanes and most people never know it was a person?

2) A company in the Netherlands could dominate a sector of the aircraft manufacturing industry.

3) A company known for its business aircraft and light twins built and sold the most popular airliner seating less than 20 in the world?

4) A company in Canada that was the spin-off of a company in England built some of the finest aircraft in the world for getting in-and-out of what seemed to be impossibly short runways all while carrying fare-paying passengers and not making them want to loose their lunch?

4) Pilots actually had to *fly* the puddle-jumpers they flew?

Today, the RJ's have as much automation and "toys" as the big iron. What ever happened to learning how to be an airline pilot by flying with the minimum of "toys" and "gadgets"? It seems every training airplane up for rent today has a big MFD, dual GPSs, and no ADF. I only started flying 6 years ago, and I learned how to do ADF approaches as one of my first IFR procedures. Start from the bottom I say.