Embraer has formed a single new executive team charged with overseeing both sales of E-Jets to lessors and sales of cargo aircraft under its E-Jet Freighter programme.
The Sao Jose dos Campos-based company created the new “dedicated Global Leasing and Freighter team” in response to synergies between the leasing and freighter businesses, says Oliver Gerg, the executive charged with heading the newly formed division.
The structure makes sense partly because the E-Jet Freighter’s first two buyers are lessors that have already own E-Jet fleets, says Gerg, who holds the new position of Embraer senior vice-president of global leasing and freighter.
Additionally, Gerg, who helped launch the E-Jet Freighter programme in 2022, notes that Embraer’s “leasing teams are very global facing” – they work with lessors in numerous countries and understand market conditions in various regions.
As such, Gerg’s sales team is well positioned to work with lessors to identify E190s within the global fleet that are ideal candidates for being converted into freighters, he says.
“They have the value of looking globally in the secondary market… The assets are spread around the world,” Gerg says. “We can help identify E190s for conversion for lessors.”
Embraer’s new Global Leasing and Freighter division operates out of Amsterdam.
Embraer has a sizeable business with aircraft lessors, with 31 such companies owning E-Jet E1s and ten participating in the E2 programme. Gerg says 98% of E-Jet E1 transactions in the last five years have involved lessors as buyers or sellers or both.
Regional One and Nordic Aviation Capital are the two known E190F customers, and each hold orders for up to 10 of the passenger-to-freighter-converted jets.
Through its E-Jet Freighter programme, Embraer has pitched conversions of both E190s and E195s. But it has only yet developed the E190F because E190s are much more plentiful, with about 550 in the market, compared to less than 200 E195s, Gerg says.
The first E190F got airborne in 2024. Regulators in Brazil, the European Union and USA recently certificated the E190F, which can carry roughly 13.5t of payload and has 2,500nm (4,630km) of range.
Embraer has not yet delivered the first of the type but aims to do so “within the coming months or weeks”, Gerg says. Conversion work on a second E190 is underway.
