BASEL, Switzerland (dpa) – What’s good enough for the leading aircraft manufacturers Airbus and Boeing is certainly just as good for the small-time companies.
Moreover, since regional aviation is currently showing much more dynamic expansion than medium- to long-range intercontinental flights, the competition among the makers of turboprop planes and small regional jets has become just as tough as that between the big plane companies.
Many experts now agree that of the current half a dozen regional plane manufacturers, over the long run only three will survive. “Regional aviation is going to continue its above-proportional growth,” predicts Andre Dose, the new president at the Swiss regional flier Crossair, Europe’s most important regional airline. “In the years ahead we are are projecting annual growth rates of 15 to 20 per cent just in Europe alone,” Dose adds. “But only those manufacturers with great innovative capabilities will survive. Those who want to rest on their laurels will have very little chance in the industry.” His regional aviation projections far outstrip the prospects seen for general continental and intercontinental air traffic, which is foreseen growing by about five per cent annually in Europe and up to 7.5 per cent in the Pacific region. The Swedes, who for years impressed the industry with their sturdy turboprop planes, are now pulling out of airplane manufacturing after years of red-ink results. The French-Italian consortium ATR in Toulouse has meanwhile failed in its attempt, with English help, to penetrate the market for jet planes with fewer than 100 seats. ATR is finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the Canadian company Bombardier, which is more and more starting to dominate the market for turboprop planes, especially with its up- market high-performance aircraft, the 70-seat Dash 8Q-400. This plane is now in service at a half a dozen airlines and is regarded in the turboprop industry as the top of the line: high performance, low exhaust emissions, quiet and almost as fast as jet airplanes. But already there are hardly any doubts left that the future for small passenger jets is going to belong to the “upstarts”: Embraer of Sao Paulo, Brazil and Fairchild Dornier of San Antonio, Texas and Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. Both companies already have new twin-jet planes in operation or on the drawing boards, aircraft which thanks to their economic efficiency, performance and considerably better emission levels are superior to all comparable planes now up in the skies. It is no wonder, then, that Europe’s leading regional carriers, Crossair and Lufthansa CityLine, are making their plans completely based on the new jets. In their slipstream, a series of other regional airlines are following. Basel-based Crossair is planning to exchange its fleet of Saab and Avro planes with 75 new Embraer jets, while CityLine is going to do the same with its Canadair and Avro planes in favour of new Fairchild Dornier jet. Crossair is counting on stormy growth in regional aviation. Together with GE Capital Aviation Training (GECAT), a subsidiary of the General Electric concern, it is setting up in Basel a training centre for ground and in-flight personnel called CROSSCAT. When the facility is finished in five years’ time, it will contain the world’s 14 most modern flight simulators and each year will train 150 pilots for Crossair and 150 for other airlines. “In Basel we are located in the heart of Europe, and CROSSCAT will become the leading training centre for European regional aviation,” Dose said.
