New and improved!

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Nice looking plane. It faces some tough competition in the market from Embraer and Bombardier. Both of those companies have a proven track record at producing efficient and profitable airliners at that capacity. That track record includes a good support system (training, maintenace, spare parts, etc.), something Sukhoi will have to establish.

The race to produce these 70-100 seat airliners is really interesting, considering the history:
Fairchild-Dornier -- Bankrupt, never flew.
Fokker 70/100 -- Bankrupt.
IPTN (Indonesia) -- Never flew.
BAE 146/RJ -- Out of the airliner business.

And these slightly larger versions:
Boeing 717 (actually a DC9-NG): Out of production.
Boeing 737-600 -- very few sales.
Airbus 318 -- even less.

So now we have new ones from Embraer (in production), Sukhoi, Bombardier ( if the C-series is ever launched, the current largest version is an over-stretched biz-jet), and coming up soon the ARJ21 from China. The market may have changed but there's still too many competitors.

I don't expect to see Sukhoi selling many in China which is producing its own direct competitor. It'll be interesting to see how it does in the West. There was a good deal of Boeing involvement in the project at first but that's pretty much gone by the boards.

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

It doesn't look very big, based on the size and number of windows, and the seat numbers (70-100) are much lower than the highest I've seen for the biggest jets (several hundred passengers). What am I missing? Is there some funky economic scaling effect that makes planes in a middle size range like this rare and unprofitable while bigger and smaller ones do fine? I never imagined that before but can see how it would be possible, but then I still don't know why it would be called "super"...

Then, there's the Very Light Jet market rapidly coming on board:

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Why have the smallest planes generally not had jet engines? What makes propellors better at that size scale?

Most small planes are "commuter" aircraft intended for short hops. A short hop means about the time one reaches the altitude at which a jet starts becoming efficient it's almost time for the descent. Props and turbos IIRC are more efficient at lower altitudes.

Plus compared to the waiting time for commuter flights, the length of the slight increase in flight time due to the slower props and turboprops doesn't add much to the gate/gate equation.

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Strange thing. I recently went on a short hop from Birmingham International to Belfast - the plane out had 4 jets, the plane back had 2 turboprops. They were from the same airline. Any idea why?

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

Might be that the jet was on a short hop of a route that included much longer legs, whereas the turboprop was dedicated to that hop or a series of short ones. Then again the jet might have been filling in for another plane that had had mechanical difficulties. Finally the airline may be making so much money that they don't care.

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No, you are wrong - its the Earths west-to-east rotation through the luminiferous aether which causes the plane to experience more drag going out than returning, hence the need for more engines generating greater power.

Having looked further, it was a BAE 146 going out and a De Havilland Dash 8 300 returning. I'm still puzzled by the 4 jets on the first plane.

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

It doesn't look very big, based on the size and number of windows, and the seat numbers (70-100) are much lower than the highest I've seen for the biggest jets (several hundred passengers). What am I missing? Is there some funky economic scaling effect that makes planes in a middle size range like this rare and unprofitable while bigger and smaller ones do fine? I never imagined that before but can see how it would be possible, but then I still don't know why it would be called "super"...

Smaller regional jets are very profitable for short to medium range flights, especially when serving smaller cities. It's a lot easier to fill 50-100 seats in a regional jet than it is to fill 130+ seats in a 737. Every type of plane has a minimum number of seats that must be filled before the flight is profitable. There are a lot of factors that determine the break even point: cost of the plane (lease or purchase), amount and cost of fuel consumed on the flight, the number of personnel on the ground and in the plane required to operate the flight, etc. Regional jets generally have lower labor costs due to having smaller flight crews (who are typically paid less than the crews on larger planes), smaller ground support requirements, lower fuel consumption, etc. If it wasn't for regional jets, my city (Colorado Springs) probably wouldn't have half the air service that we have today.

Using the spoke and hub arrangement so popular with the major airlines, regional jets provide service between the outlying smaller cities and the hubs. Flights between hubs or major cities typically have a lot more passengers so larger planes like the 767 or A320 make more sense. Really large planes like the A-380 are only profitable on the most heavily travelled routes (if then).