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The United States has a 50-seat regional jet problem. Mainline U.S. airline pilot labor agreements limit the amount of outsourced flying that can be done with regional jets, while rising costs, consolidated hubs and a shortage of pilots have meant a shift to the largest still-in-production jet allowed — the Embraer E175. Yet, hundreds of 50-seat jets remain flying among the big three U.S. carriers, and 300 will reach their notional 25-year retirement age over the next half-decade. No company manufactures a 50-seat regional jet today.
“The network carriers are acknowledging there is a 50-seat problem. So they know there’s no fix for it…because they’re going away, they just don’t know how to address it yet,” Chris Jones, vice president of the Americas for ATR told The Air Current in an interview. The joint venture between Airbus and Leonardo believes it can be part of that solution, eventually replacing about 200 of those 300 50-seaters still flying today on the shorter routes for which the turboprop is optimized, though passenger aversion to turboprops and a preference for driving over short distances may stand in its way.
Related: Special Report: ATR is making a run at its loneliest market
This visualization is segmented across American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines and color coded by aircraft type: yellow for the CRJ200, purple for the ERJ-145 and blue for the CRJ550. We’ve taken it one step further, giving you the ability to examine each route and its monthly number of flights. The database underlying this visualization is based on September 2025 flight schedules published in Cirium’s Diio.
How to explore: This data visualization is fully interactive, and each mapped arc can be selected to view information about the city pair. You can click and drag to explore, as well as pinch to zoom and holding CTRL or Cmd ⌘ while moving your cursor to title and rotate the map and enable close inspection of any location.
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