Kevin O'Toole/LONDON
JETSTREAM AIRCRAFT aims to build a three-year backlog for its J41 30-seat turboprop to take into the alliance with ATR when the merger is completed by the end of this year.
Marketing director Nick Godwin estimates that orders for the J41 earned it a 59% share of the 30-seat airliner market in 1994, with firm orders for 67 aircraft and another 35 commitments.
With deliveries scheduled to run at 30 aircraft a year, Jetstream would have to come close to repeating this performance to reach the backlog target by the end of the year.
The joint venture, which brings British Aerospace's Jetstream and Avro regional-jet units together with ATR, should be signed by the end of April, but will still have to pass European competition rules. The companies will then begin to merge marketing and customer- support functions at Toulouse.
The J41 is effectively the only production aircraft, which Jetstream takes into the joint venture. The 19-seat J31 Super will still be produced on demand, but none are now on order. "We believe that the J41 will become the entry-level aircraft," says Godwin.
Airline economics dictate that the 19-seat market will be dominated by used aircraft and that without fresh sales the new-build market is "threatened by extinction", says Godwin. Jetstream's sister leasing company JSX is managing a portfolio of nearly 300 J31s, for which BAe holds the financing liabilities.
Over the next decade, Jetstream forecasts that world 19-seat aircraft sales will run at around 30 a year. By contrast, the 30 seat sector is expected to produce annual deliveries of more than 100 aircraft.
Jetstream is also due to abandon planned production of the J61, a revamped version of the 70-seater ATP. Godwin says that Jetstream will nevertheless press ahead with the J61 certification and produce between four and six of the aircraft, which are "significantly built". These are likely to be sold to a single operator.
Godwin admits that the labour-intensive 70-seater was clearly uneconomic, given depressed market prices. "The decision was going to be made irrespective of the joint venture, but we had to keep up pressure on the partners," he says. BAe plays down speculation that the line could eventually be transferred to India, which has previously built the ATP predecessor, the BAe 748.
Source: Flight International
