Narrative:

During the takeoff roll; we felt an abrupt pull at 80 knots. It felt as if we had a tire blow or hit something. It was very brief but the airplane continued to accelerate as if nothing happened. All engine and EICAS indications were normal. The same thing happened at rotation. The aircraft got airborne without a problem. At about 200 feet AGL it happened again very abruptly. At about 1000 feet AGL the left engine went to idle. Both power levers were in the takeoff detent. I told the first officer 'we have a left engine failure' he agreed. He notified ATC. Tower gave us a heading of 090 and descend to 3000 ft. We were climbing thru 3;800 at that time. I had the first officer read the qrc for engine failure. I did not shut the left engine down because it was not on fire and still had a little bit of thrust. I got the visual approach and cleared to land on the longest runway. We landed without incident. We had crash and rescue confirm that our engine was not on fire. We then returned to the gate and deplaned the passengers.the previous crew wrote up an itt (interstage turbine temperature) exceedance. Maintenance cleared it. Crews should always keep in mind that there could be an engine failure with past engine problems.

Related reports:

Google
 

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: CRJ-900 flight crew reported returning to departure airport after the #1 engine rolled back to idle.

Narrative: During the takeoff roll; we felt an abrupt pull at 80 knots. It felt as if we had a tire blow or hit something. It was very brief but the airplane continued to accelerate as if nothing happened. All engine and EICAS indications were normal. The same thing happened at rotation. The aircraft got airborne without a problem. At about 200 feet AGL it happened again very abruptly. At about 1000 feet AGL the left engine went to idle. Both power levers were in the takeoff detent. I told the FO 'we have a left engine failure' He agreed. He notified ATC. Tower gave us a heading of 090 and descend to 3000 ft. We were climbing thru 3;800 at that time. I had the FO read the QRC for engine failure. I did not shut the left engine down because it was not on fire and still had a little bit of thrust. I got the visual approach and cleared to land on the longest runway. We landed without incident. We had crash and rescue confirm that our engine was not on fire. We then returned to the gate and deplaned the passengers.The previous crew wrote up an ITT (Interstage Turbine Temperature) exceedance. Maintenance cleared it. Crews should always keep in mind that there could be an engine failure with past engine problems.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.