Manufacturers were continuing to put on a brave face at the show yesterday, despite ever-strengthening indications that the region's economic turmoil is indeed having an effect on the industry.
Beyond the obvious threats to airliner orders, it was being suggested that seemingly unrelated moves like Cathay Pacific Airways' dropping of Future Air Navigation System (FANS) equipment from its new Airbus A340s are, in fact, economically driven.
Indonesian manufacturer IPTN yesterday called news that four of the key customers for its N250 regional turboprop could be close to collapse, threatening 26 orders for the machine, worrying, rather than catastrophic.
"Even if some of the N250s we hope to sell in the region are postponed, that isn't necessarily a bad thing," says IPTN's Jean-Mark Eloy.
Eloy is marketing vice-president of American Regional Aircraft Industry (AMRAI), a body set up by IPTN in 1994 "-specifically to reduce our reliance on the domestic market, which has never been particularly well organised or structured."
Progress
He points to considerable progress by IPTN in signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Air Venezuela for four N250s (in the flying display at the show) with four options. There is also "considerable interest" in Europe, he adds.
"Those buyers would only be too happy to take over some of the orders from Bouraq Indonesia, Merpati Nusantara Airlines and Sempati Air [three of the affected airlines]," says Eloy, adding that he expects the Indonesian economy to recover within two or three years "-and by that time we will be ready once again to build N250s for the domestic market."
Meanwhile, on-line information service Air Transport Intelligence (ATI) was reporting considerable scepticism over Cathay Pacific's claim that it was dropping FANS equipment because the infrastructure is not ready for the technology.
It blames the failure of air traffic control (ATC) providers, particularly the US FAA's Oakland Centre, for failing to implement Communications Navigation Surveillance/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) on the ground, and so preventing it from realising their advertised economic benefits.
Supplier companies at Asian Aerospace concede that Cathay has a good point, but say they believe the airline's real motivation is simply to save short-term costs in its current difficult operating conditions.
Source: Flight Daily News
