James Robinson wrote:

You were originally commenting on the two aircraft models, not the seats.
The CRJ has the same fuselage diameter as the Dash 8, so they both take
similar seats. The choice of the specific types of seats and their
spacing is up to the airlines.

Airlines have far less freedom in how they configure regional aircraft.
The seats can have different upholustering, and seat pitch, but seat
width is pretty much fixed by the manufacturer. Except for Comair,
airlines using CRJ/Q400s don't have large enough fleets to justify
custom made seats that go through approval/certification. Much easier to
use the seats already certified for that aircraft.

DH8 CRJ
Cabin length: 18.8 12.34
Max Cabin width 2.51 2.53
Max height: 1.95 1.85
Cabin volume(m3): 77.60 47.80
Floor area(m2): 43.6 26.97
Pax 68-78 50


The CRJ specs are 50 pax at 31" pitch in 13 rows. This uses 10.33m with
2.01m taken up by door/etc. Door is 0.91m. Leaving 1.1m for the rest.


The Q400 specs at 78 pax = unknown pitch.

Assuming 1.1m of space is wasted as in CRJ
18.8m - 0.76 front door - 0.71m back door - 1.1 wasted space = 16.23m
78 pax is 20 rows, and 16.23 / 20 gives a seat pitch of: 31.6"

For 68 pax, this means 17 rows. And that gives a seat pitch of 37".

Unfortunatly, Bombardier has removed the detailed cabin cross section
details and layouts from its web site.



Porter airlines has 70 seats at 34" seat pitch on its Q400s. 18 rows.
That takes up 15.69 metres of cabin length. That leaves 1.64m of wasted
space.

Cabin width of the CRJ is wider. However, this is somewhat misleading
because the floor of the CRJ-200 is higher up than in the dash-8. (hence
the lower ceiling on CRJ). The bins are bigger on the Q400, leading to a
more crowded ceiling than on CRJ, despite the CRJ's ceiling being lower.

Cabin volume is interesting:

For 78 pax, the Dash-8 gives 0.995 m3 per passenger.
For 50 pax, the CRJ-200 gives 0.956 m2 per passenger.

This is probably due to the higher ceiling of the Q400. But if volume
used by overhead bins were to be counted, I wouldn't be surprised to see
the gap with CRJ-200 narrowed significantly.