It was…alright. It also felt very cramped. Seating was 2-3 across. People had noticeable trouble walking down the aisle. Opening the overhead bins seemed dangerous as it could easily bang someone’s head.
I last took a 737 (unsure of variant, but wasn’t a Max) in 2022, but I don’t remember it being as cramped as the A220.
The 'buzz' about the A220 is that you can fly more people further while using less fuel. All of this is super exciting if you are an airline, but nothing that directly benefits you as a passenger. There are various configurations of the A220, but the most 'efficient' ones are very cramped.
I looked up the Breeze example given, and while the seats and cabin do look amazing, I don’t see why the same couldn’t be equipped on a 737. That’s more a function of what the airline wants, isn’t it?
The A220 I rode definitely did not “feel big in the inside”.
A cheaper flight enables for this to happen, but does not guarantee it.
They are definitely felt much nicer and quieter than smaller planes like Embraer E175 or E195.
I’d say that it goes back fairly far to the early 2000s or so when they should have had a development cadence like “widebody, narrowbody, widebody, narrowbody” because narrowbody is 80% of the market but instead it has been “widebody, widebody, widebody, widebody, yet another widebody”. Airbus and Boeing colluded to compete with one hand behind their backs in this time period which was profitable in the short term but would kill Boeing in the long term if it were not “too essential to national defense to fail” —- that is, with fly-by-wire and better geometry the A320 has more of a future (can even steal some of the widebody business) not the mention Airbus bought the A220 which is a next-generation narrowbody which was developed not by a big manufacturer but a small manufacturer backed by the Canadian government.
Try getting a flight in a modern narrowbody like the E2-Jet or A220 on an airline like Breeze and you will se that nobody would put up with riding in a 737 if they had a choice; even though that kind of plane is small on the outside it feels big on the outside, comfort is much more like a huge plane. It’s one of those things you have to fly to believe.