As new turboprops take to the skies, reporters are beginning to notice them, including Time Inc’s Coco Masters who wrote a piece on the trend recently. She noted that passengers may equate such travel to “being crammed into a flying matchbox while a man inside your head uses a jackhammer to tunnel his way out.” However, she advised that passengers should “relax, because the ride is getting a lot better.”
The article focused on Bombardier’s Q400, saying airlines have ordered 131 this year, more than double the order’s booked in 2006. As for ATR, Masters said ATR was “in a death spiral” when sales jumped 100 percent for the ATR-42-500 and 157 percent for the 72–seat ATR 72-500.
Masters indicated that Horizon’s enthusiastic response to the Q400 was the result of a lack of delivery positions for Bombardier’s CRJ-700. “So Horizon grudgingly ordered 12 turboprops, and the airline hasn't looked back. ‘We found out very quickly that the Q400 was a completely different animal,’ said Horizon’s Pat Zachweija, until recently a top executive at Alaska Air Group. Horizon, has the most Q400s of any fleet in North America and expects to have 48 – 70 percent of its fleet – by 2009. ‘The economics were there,’ he says. ‘And as fuel goes up, we just look smarter and smarter.’ The Q400 might allow the regional to go up against low-cost, short-haul king Southwest and its fleet of Boeing 737s.”
Even so, Alaska announced its regional subsidiary will post losses for the full year and Calyon Securities Analyst Ray Niedl has called for a restructuring of the carrier.
Masters noted increased fuel prices have prompted carriers to reconsider its “jet-first strategy on short-haul routes (less than 500 miles, or about 800 km). Bombardier and ATR figured out how to quiet the beast, although the Q400's 15-second drone on takeoff caused a recent flyer to initially doubt the improved 76-seater. Once the plane is cruising, though, Bombardier's noise-and-vibration-reduction system (cousin to technology used in submarines) monitors sound levels through microphones inside the plane walls. A computer initiates vibrations through special absorbers to counter those from the propellers, reducing the resonance of the airframe and hushing the cabin about four db quieter than many jets. ATR upgraded its four-blade propeller to a six-blade fiber-composite one with a smaller diameter that generates less vibration and cabin noise when coupled with other noise-dampening features.”
She also cited what she calls the aircrafts’ “green card: the $24 million Q400 burns from 30 percent to 40 percent less fuel than – and emits half the CO2 – of a 70-seater regional jet and offers up to eight more seats. ATR says its light, $18 million 72-seater goes further, consuming 30 percent less fuel than the Q400 and 50 percent less than a regional jet.” Related Story
Masters said ATR is aiming to make $1 billion in sales next year, “and airlines and manufacturers are optimistic that today's turboprop runs will make the never-before-seen 500 production mark.” Bombardier, she added, is working on the 90-seat Q400X, making it the largest turboprop on the market and enabling it to “compete quietly with even bigger jets.”