Embraer confirms it has cancelled development of a next-generation turboprop passenger aircraft, having previously said the project was on hold due to insufficiently advanced engine technologies.
“The turboprop initiative has been cancelled by us,” Embraer chief executive Francisco Gomes Neto said on 4 November during the company’s third-quarter earnings call. “We do not at this time have any project or initiative in that direction…it’s not on hold. It has been cancelled.”
Embraer had for years been examining the possibility of developing a new 70- to 90-seat turboprop to compete in a market that had grown stale. The only Western aircraft company still producing such turboprops is Franco-Italian manufacturer ATR.
In 2020, Embraer teased the market by releasing a digital rendering of a conceptual turboprop with wing-mounted engines. In 2021 it released an image a tweaked design with rear-mounted powerplants. But the company never committed to development because, executives said, engine manufactures had not offered a next-generation turbine.
Last year, Embraer commercial aviation chief executive Arjan Meijer said the effort was “in the deep freezer”.
Gomes Neto made clear on 4 November, however, that Embraer sees other commercial aviation market opportunities, although he suggests a new product announcement will not come in the near term.
“We are thinking beyond five years and even 10 years,” he says, adding that the company is “investing in new technologies” to prepare for future products. “New products could refer to…larger [aircraft] than the E195-E2 – it could be larger or smaller.”
“We are also looking at new technologies with electric propulsion,” Gomes Neto adds. “It could be a hybrid…midsize aircraft.”
He declines to specify a timeline by which Embraer might bring a new aircraft to market, saying only: “We are prepared to make the decision when the time comes.”
Gomes Neto says Embraer’s robust backlog of unfilled orders will fuel “very significant growth from the company in the next five years”.
At the end of October, that backlog included orders for 490 E-Jets, which Embraer values at $15.2 billion, up 37% year on year.
