CEO Interview: ATR chiefs says no 90-seater without Airbus support

March 3, 2015, c. Leeham Co: ATR, the turbo-prop OEM 50% owned by Airbus and 50% by Finmeccanica, wants to develop a new airplane to replace the venerable ATR 42/72 series that entered service in 1985 and 1989… Read More

Tomorrow’s Bombardier earnings call: trying to be upbeat in the midst of a tornado

Subscription Required. Introduction As the market prepares for Bombardier’s 2014 year end earnings call tomorrow, CEO Pierre Beaudoin has his work cut out for him to restore confidence among the airlines and lessors who have ordered the CSeries… Read More

Areas of investigation of TransAsia GE235 accident

A TransAsia ATR 72 crashed yesterday on take off from downtown airport. Investigators will look at the following: Because the reported Mayday call indicated engine flameout, there will be initial focus on the engines and with it, anything… Read More

Turboprops’ future is OK but not great as ATR corners market

Subscription Required Introduction Jan. 5, 2015: Conventional wisdom suggests that turboprops are making a bit of a comeback because these remain far more efficient for routes up to 400 miles than jets, particularly at high fuel prices. Even… Read More

The challenges in bringing a new turboprop to market

By Philippe Poutissou Special to Leeham News and Comment Introduction Dec. 15, 2014: The market for turboprop aircraft has been strong for nearly a decade, yet there has been limited new product development in the segment. This has… Read More

Assessment of Lessors in Airbus and Boeing backlogs, narrow- vs wide-body

Subscription Required Introduction Nov. 30, 2014: Airlines now lease about 50% of their aircraft under a variety of mechanisms: operating, finance, leveraged and Islamic leases, just to name a few. There are operating leasing, special purpose and “house”… Read More

“We need more than one family,” says Embraer COO

Subscription required. Now open to all Readers. (Nov. 29, 2014) Introduction Oct. 15, 2014: Embraer had the opportunity to design a clean-sheet airplane as a successor to the E-Jet to respond to the Bombardier CSeries, with the 100-110… Read More

Bombardier woes go beyond CSeries

The news last week that Bombardier reorganized its business units, laid off another 1,800 employees and saw the retirement of Guy Hachey, president and CEO of the aerospace division, was viewed by some media and observers as an… Read More

Farnborough Air Show, July 16: Orders Summary

Here are the orders we’ve seen for today (there could be more); this should pretty well do it for the show, though it does continue through Friday and there probably will be a few more deals: Airbus: Air… Read More

Farnborough Air Show, July 14: Orders Summary

Here are orders that were announced on the first official day of the Farnborough Air Show (at least the ones we’ve seen from Seattle–feel free to add to the list if we’ve missed any): Airbus: from Air Lease… Read More