Austria's Tyrolean Airways has become the second European customer, after Wider¿e, for the high-speed, 70-seat de Havilland Dash 8-400 with an $83 million order for four aircraft.
The airline, which has also taken an additional four options, will take delivery of the four firm Dash 8s between late 1999 and early 2001.
Innsbruck-based Tyrolean already operates 37-seat Dash 8-100s and 50-seat -300s, 50-seat Canadair Regional Jets and 80-seat Fokker 70s. The Dash 8-400s will be used to replace some of the airline's existing smaller aircraft, and for growth into new markets.
The Tyrolean order is for the 72-seat -400B version of the aircraft, which offers slightly greater passenger accommodation than the 70-seat -400A designed for the North American market.
Fritz Feitl, Tyrolean's president and chief executive officer, says that the Dash 8-400 order comes as a result of a requirement for a larger sized turboprop to operate its feeder routes from Vienna, and that Canadair's similarly sized stretched Regional Jet (RJ), the CRJ-X, was not considered: "We have a yield problem [on the feeder routes], and need the lower seat-kilometre costs of a turboprop," he says. "On the more highly competitive routes, passengers clearly prefer jets, and so we utilise the RJ and Fokker 70."
Feitl says that the airline does not have a requirement for a larger Regional Jet at the moment "-we are satisfied with the Fokker 70, and are in the market for another example," he says. "If in the future we are forced to dispose of the Fokker 70, then we would consider the CRJ-X," he adds.
The deal takes firm orders for the -400 to 15 from four customers. The first is scheduled to be rolled out at de Havilland's Downsview, Ontario, plant in November with the first flight following in December. First deliveries to launch customer Great China Airlines are targeted for early 1999.
Source: Flight International
