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An American Eagle airlines Bombardier CRJ700 takes off from Los...

An American Eagle airlines Bombardier CRJ700 takes off from Los Angeles International Airport in 2020. Credit: GC Images/AaronP/Bauer-Griffin

The passenger plane involved in a deadly midair collision with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter Wednesday evening above Washington, D.C., was a Bombardier CRJ700 series regional jet operated by PSA Airlines, a subsidiary of American Airlines, the airline confirmed.

These sleek, low-winged, twin-engine jets are among the mainstays of smaller, short-haul regional carriers that make up a significant portion of the U.S. passenger travel fleet. They include regional jets and turboprop aircraft that are more fuel-efficient than larger jets and can operate out of smaller, regional airports and airfields — all on routes usually covering under 1,000 miles.

The type of jet involved in the crash Wednesday was developed and manufactured by Canadian-based Bombardier as part of a line of smaller regional jets, including the CRJ500, CRJ700, CRJ705, CRJ900 and CRJ1000. According to the official Bombardier website and aviation industry sources, the CRJ700 version accommodates from 63 to 78 passengers, based on configuration, at a maximum speed of 544 mph.

The crash Wednesday evening killed all 60 passengers on the jet and four crew members. The three soldiers in the helicopter also died.

Used by a host of regional airlines, among them PSA, SkyWest, Endeavor Air (Delta Air Lines) and GoJet (United), these jets began development in the 1990s, were first test-flown in 1999 and entered service in 2001. Their direct competition in the short-haul regional jet market is the Brazilian-built Embraer 170 — a plane that closely resembles an Airbus A220 or Boeing 737.

Bombardier was founded in 1942 by snowmobile designer and builder Joseph-Armand Bombardier and is headquartered in Montreal. Industry experts consider it one of the world's key producers for both regional jet aircraft and trains. In 1982, Bombardier was awarded a contract by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to build 825 R62A rail cars for New York City Transit and later was awarded a contract for 836 M7 rail cars for the Long Island Rail Road. It also built an M7A variant fleet of the cars for Metro-North.

Those M7 cars, first delivered to the LIRR in 2002, were built at the Bombardier plant in La Pocatière, Quebec, just outside Quebec City.

Despite the success of the CRJ program, Bombardier no longer manufacturers the jets — the program was sold to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 2020.

Throughout its operational history, the CRJ700 series has been one of safest aircraft in operation anywhere in the world. According to statistics available from the Aviation Safety Network, an Alexandria, Virginia-based arm of the Flight Safety Foundation, nine Bombardier 700-series jets have been involved in incidents since 2008 — two of those related to flight operations and, before Wednesday, none fatal.

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