Franco-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR recently completed market studies it says leave no doubt its turboprops are best suited to fill what it views as substantial demand for new regional aircraft in the USA.
The company last week highlighted those studies to several US regional airline chief executives in Washington, DC, while citing new cabin configurations it describes as tailored to the higher-spending travellers US airlines are so keen to court.
ATR says its turboprops are ideal replacements for hundreds of 50-seat jets nearing retirement. (They are also, at least as of now, the only new-production replacements in that size category.)
ATR’s new cabin configurations include its “HighLine” concept for a 50-seat ATR 72-600. While that type traditionally carries about 70 passengers, the HighLine concept has 10 first-class, 20 premium-economy and 20 baseline-economy seats.
“With these configurations we can… capture the premium demand and improve the profitability of the airlines when compared to the CRJ200s or the Embraer 145,” ATR head of business development Takek Ben Omrane said on 17 September. “We are working with airlines to fine tune those layouts.”
Perhaps most notably, ATR proposes adding a forward boarding door to its 72-600. ATRs have long only had rear boarding doors, a sticking point for US airlines that bristle at disrupting the traditional premium-first boarding process.
ATR has already completed engineering work related to the forward door and is eager for a US customer to place orders.
“If you’re boarding from the rear of the aircraft, it kind of disrupts the flow that you are used to,” says ATR head of Americas Christopher Jones. “If there was a US launch customer, with a suitable scale, we would go forward with that development.”
“The product is defined… The next step is to have the right market conditions and a proper large customer base to effectively industrialise it,” adds ATR senior vice-president of commercial Alexis Vidal.
Though ATR rolled out the HighLine concepts several years ago, it has since completed a thorough US market evaluation.
US regional airlines operate some 300 50-seat regional jets, including about 200 ERJ140s and ERJ145s and 90 MHI RJ Aviation CRJ200s, according to fleet data provider Cirium.
That figure is down from about 800 50-seaters ten years ago. During that period, US airlines also divested essentially all their turboprops, replacing the smaller aircraft with larger regional jets such as CRJ700s, CRJ900s and E175s.
ATR says airlines will retire most of the 300 small jets by 2035.
If carriers fail to replace them with new 50-seaters, they will likely have no choice but to cut flights to small US communities – places lacking enough demand to fill larger jets, ATR says. It estimates some 30 US cities could lose all air service as a result, citing a study conducted in partnership with Georgia Institute of Technology.
Such would continue a multi-decade trend.
Many regional US air links disappeared in recent decades as the country’s regional airlines consolidated and acquired massive fleets of 75-seat regional jets.
“Demand is now requiring everybody to go through larger hubs,” says Rick Hoefling, chief executive of US regional carrier CommuteAir. “If you’re in these smaller cities, you don’t have direct service anymore.”
GoJet Airlines CEO Rick Leach notes that commuter airlines once operated 20 flights daily from St Louis to places like Springfield, Illinois and Colombia, Missouri. Those flights no longer exists; flying to those cities now means traversing a major hub.
Indeed, 540 US airports had scheduled air service in January, down 7.2% from 582 airports in 2009, even as airlines operated more flights, and with larger aircraft, according to data from the Regional Airline Association. Smaller cities suffered the most lost flights.
ATR is the only Western manufacturer still producing passenger aircraft in the small regional aircraft category, offering its 30-50-seat 42-600 and 44-78-seat 42-700, both powered by Pratt & Whitney Canada PW127XTs.
“We’ve been a survivor and an innovator at the same time,” says ATR’s Jones.
Embraer and Bombardier halted production of their small jets years ago. ATR alone has owned the segment since De Havilland Canada in 2022 stopped assembling Dash 8-400s, though De Havilland has left open the possibility of rebooting production.
“We remain engaged in pre-launch activities with both customers and suppliers and are on track to make a production decision in 2026 for both a 50- and 80-seat aircraft,” the Canadian manufacturer tells FlightGlobal.
Embraer had in recent years teased at developing a new turboprop, but the idea languished due to engine manufacturers not offering clean-sheet powerplants capable of substantially better efficiency. “Nothing has changed in that regard,” says Embraer chief commercial officer Martyn Holmes.
Start-ups like Maeve Aerospace and Heart Aerospace are working to develop hybrid-electric regional aircraft, but such programmes are unsure of success and years from fruition.
The lack of options has US airline chiefs frustrated.
“We want to encourage more product development, more manufacturing, more opportunities,” says Timothy Wang, CEO of Endeavor Air, a CRJ700 and CRJ900 operator owned by Delta Air Lines. “We’re going to have to do something in the future.”
ATR says its turboprops are the solution. It says the types cost 30% less per seat to operate than 50-seat jets, while having comparable cabin noise.
Best of all, they are available now.
The company also plans before 2030 to fly a hybrid-electric-modified 72-600 demonstrator, part of a European Union Clean Aviation initiative. ATR and its partners – which include Safran and RTX subsidiaries Pratt & Whitney Canada and Collins Aerospace – will replace the aircraft’s right PW127XT with a 2MW hybrid-system, they say.
“We keep the thermal engine and we add an electric motor on the gearbox to use this extra power [and] optimise for every part of the flight,” ATR senior vice-president of engineering Daniel Cuchet said last week.
“With these new technologies, we’re introducing this high voltage directly into the engine,” adds RTX chief engineer Michael Winter. “We’re learning a lot and we’re working through [it] with… certification authorities.”
ATR hopes in the mid-2030s to bring to market a hybrid variant that is 30% more efficient than today’s aircraft, with 20% efficiency gained from the powerplant and 10% from aircraft-level changes.
Airline CEOs see promise in ATR’s updates, specifically its forward boarding door and 50-seat layout.
“I think that ATR is on the right track in terms of looking at matching or exceeding the cabin experience, the comfort” of regional jets, says Endeavor chief Wang.
Delta clarifies it has no plans to acquire ATRs.
The CEOs also suspect that US flyers, now long accustomed to jets, will need some convincing before embracing turboprops.
“We’ve got to get them [to understand] the fact that the technology on this aircraft is more advanced than the big jets you are flying in many cases, or the regional jets… It is not old technology,” says GoJet’s Leach.
“You’ve got to get out there and market it to the masses” Leach advises ATR.
