Bombardier CRJ700

The Bombardier CRJ700 is a regional jet designed and built by Bombardier Aerospace in Canada. The Bombardier CRJ700 was built by Bombardier to fill the needs of larger aircraft on regional routes. To accomplish this, Bombardier worked with the design of the CRJ200 and enlarged it to create the CRJ700 regional jet. In 1995 Bombardier set up a team with an advisory panel of airline members to design the next CRJ aircraft and on January 21, 1997 the CRJ700 jet program was launched. First flight of the Bombardier CRJ700 took place on May 27, 1999 and the aircraft was officially rolled out by Bombardier at the Farnborough Airshow the next day. The flight test program was based at Bombardier's flight test facility in Wichita, Kansas. Four CRJ700s participated in flight test and they flew for a total of 1,600 hours (total).

CRJ700 Approval and Type Certificate
The CRJ700 airplane received it's final approval type certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on February 16, 2001. The CRJ700 was added to the A21E type certificate that Bombardier already had (From the CRJ200). Type certificate approval from Transport Canada occurred on December 22, 2000, making Transport Canada the first aviation regulator to approve the Bombardier CRJ700 aircraft. European approval was achieved on January 26, 2001. Brit Air was the first operator of the Bombardier CRJ700. Brit Air received the first CRJ700 from Bombardier on January 31, 2001. Shortly after delivery, the first flight of the CRJ700 occurred on February 18, 2001.

Bombardier CRJ700 Overview
The CRJ700 aircraft is a two engine regional that is an enlarged version of the CRJ200. The jet was originally powered by the GE CF34-8C1 engine. In May 2005 a new engine was certified for the CRJ700, the GE CF34-8C5B1. The new engine was a version of the CRJ900 engine that was modified for use in the CRJ700. The flight deck of the CRJ700 jet contains the the Rockwell Collins Pro Line 4 Avionics suite. Over the years Bombardier modified the CRJ700 aircraft and has built 3 different types of CRJ700 aircraft. The original CRJ700 is the Series 700 which was followed by the 701 and 702. The main differences between these series of CRJ700s are the number of passengers it is certified to carry. The 700 series can hold up to 68 passengers, the 701 series up to 70 passengers and the 702 series up to 78 passengers. Bombardier also built the CRJ705 which is a derivative of the CRJ900, but is marketed with the CRJ700 series aircraft. The CRJ700 Nextgen was launched in the late 2000s that included updated interiors.

Other Names for the Bombardier CRJ700
As with many aircraft, the Bombardier CRJ700 has multiple names. Officially, it is designated as the Bombardier CL-600-2C10, formerly the Canadair CL-600-2C10, for it's model name. This is used by aviation regulators to identify the aircraft. It is also called the Canadair CRJ700 or Canadair Regional Jet 700 because the original CRJ airplanes were built under Bombardier's Canadair division and CRJ stands for Canadair Regional Jet. There are also the short ICAO and IATA aircraft codes that airplanes have. For the Bombardier CRJ700 these are "CRJ7" for the ICAO code and "CR7" for the IATA code.

The Bombardier CRJ700 became a popular aircraft among regional jet operators because of it's economics, flexibility and commonality between other CRJ series aircraft. As of June 30, 2012 Bombardier delivered 316 CRJ700s. A total of 324 CRJ700 aircraft have been ordered leaving 8 of them on backlog.

To learn more about the CRJ700 visit the pages listed below.

Above Bombardier CRJ700 Regional Jet Photo by BriYYZ on Flickr. Photo (only) released under a Creative Commons License.