The demise of the BAe/AI(R) Jetstream 41 commuter airliner represents another step in the (often involuntary) rationalisation of the regional-turboprop market. It also, however, raises serious questions about the future of the lower end of regional-airline operations.
There can be little surprise in British Aerospace's decision to cease making the J41, which latterly has been marketed by the international combine Aero International (Regional), or AI(R). In the eight years since it was launched, only 104 J41s have been sold, and the order backlog has almost disappeared. Although the J41 was an admirably less labour-intensive aircraft to manufacture than its J31 predecessor, BAe was still losing, by its own admission, £1 million on every J41 (list price £4 million) sold.
The decision does mean, however, that aircraft assembly will cease in Scotland (even though the Jetstream plant at Prestwick will continue to make aerostructures for BAe and other customers), and AI(R) will no longer have an aircraft with fewer than 40 seats to offer its customers. That begs the question: are there customers out there who want new small turboprops? The evidence suggests not many.
Last year, seven Western manufacturers building 15 different turboprop types at nine different locations delivered 260 aircraft and took net orders for a further 141. They ended the year with a backlog of 189 orders - about eight months' worth of production at 1996 rates. Only one manufacturer (Bombardier) increased its backlog - and this in a year when air transport as a whole, and orders for large airliners, grew substantially. Clearly, that does not represent sustainable long-term business. Even without Fokker and Jestream, production capacity in the sector far outstrips likely short-term demand.
There are two major pressures on the turboprop manufacturers, one largely generated internally, and one externally. The external pressure is that of a market which no longer sustains the once-explosive growth (especially in the USA) of regional commuter airlines. Where once new entrants sprang up demanding new equipment, today's fewer new entrants seem happy to buy or lease older aircraft discarded by the maturing regionals. The internal pressure comes from turboprop manufacturers themselves, increasingly turning to small regional jets. Bombardier led the way with the 50-seat Canadair RJ; Embraer followed with the similarly sized EMB-145. Now Fairchild Dornier is offering a turbofan-powered version of its 30-seat turboprop, the 328JET, AI(R) its AI(R) 70, and Embraer its shrunk EMB-135. Of the turboprop manufacturers, only Saab and Beech do not offer small jets.
If these jet projects all succeed, a regional airline looking for a 30-seats-or-fewer turboprop in the future might have a difficult time. Although the 50-seat jets are transforming the regional business by bringing unprecedented comfort and speed to the sector, it is by no means certain that those customer-attracting features will transfer easily or economically to the 30-seat market. Customers may well appreciate jet silence and speed (even if that advantage is more perceived than real in block-time terms), but they will only pay turboprop prices for them. If the manufacturers choose to invest in the small jets, however, they will have to do so at the expense of further investment in turboprops: the business is not buoyant enough for most to invest in both markets together.
The end result may be that today's written-down, simple, old-technology, turboprops start to fit into the same category as did the Douglas DC-3. Hundreds of airlines were founded and flourished on the back of that cheap (because it was war-surplus) old warhorse, but nobody ever managed to build an affordable replacement for it. As the DC-3 became economically unsustainable as a regular airliner, so many of the "tramp-steamer" services which relied on its affordable capacity have disappeared.
Regional jets, properly used, will make profits for their operators, but not on all the routes now served by turboprops - certainly not at current frequencies. The seemingly inexorable winding-down of the small turboprop market may signal the winding down of the local air services which were the original bedrock of today's air-transport system.
Source: Flight International
