Turboprops

Much as with the Airbus acquisition of the C Series, now Airbus A220, Longview will take over the entire operation, staff included, and it will join the existing DHC-6 Twin Otter that Bombardier sold to Viking in 2006, and the Canadair CL-215 and -415 water bombers, also purchased from Bombardier in 2016.

For its part, Bombardier has been building Dash 8s since its purchase of de Havilland Canada from Boeing as part of a much wider deal competing for Canada’s aerospace market in 1992. Indeed, ‘Dash 8’, itself, refers to the dash in ‘DHC-8’, the de Havilland Canada acronym that also applies to the DHC-6 Twin Otter and nicknameless DHC-7.

In a neat twist that will have aviation historians smiling, the de Havilland Canada name is also part of the deal, which leaves Bombardier with just the CRJ Series, developed from its Challenger series of business jets.

When Bombardier purchased the Dash 8 program in 1992, it inherited the DHC-8-100 and -200, 40-seater aircraft, and the 50-seater -300. (All seating numbers are, of course, somewhat notional given the options available to airlines in pitch and configuration.)

Bombardier’s first update to the Dash 8 came in 1996 with a series of noise dampening measures, and concomitantly the -100, -200 and -300 were renamed Q100, Q200 and Q300, with Q standing for ‘quiet’. The much larger and faster 70-seater Q400 entered into service in 2000 and is the only model still produced.

Today’s turboprop market is largely a duopoly. The other player in the game is ATR, a partnership between Airbus and Italian aerospace giant Leonardo that presently produces the 50-seat ATR 42 and 70-seat ATR 72, both currently in their -600 variant with improved engines, flightdeck, avionics and cabins compared with earlier generations. Both the Dash 8 and ATR families are based on early 1980s airframes, which can charitably be described as aesthetically workmanlike: high wings, T-tails, and somewhat ungainly. Inside, both seat passengers in a relatively narrow 2-2 configuration with smaller bins than mainline jets, powered outside by Pratt & Whitney Canada PW100 series turboprops.

They compete largely with the Embraer ERJ and Bombardier CRJ series of regional jets, plus some of the smaller borderline regional/small airliner families running the Embraer E-Jet and future Mitsubishi MRJ.

One hallmark of both the ATR and Dash 8 is their speed, with the ATR cruising at 275 knots, early Dash 8s cruising at 288, and the Q400 reaching a significantly faster 360. These differences are most noticeable on the longer, niche market routes flown by the Q400 such as Canada’s Porter Airways which operate as far as Ottawa-Orlando where it’s scheduled to take 3 hours 25 minutes to cover the 1,125nm, nearly as fast as competing jets on the route.

‘The Dash 8 and ATR families are based on early 1980s airframes.’

Within Australia and New Zealand, turboprops have largely been limited to the regional routes for which they were intended, the Virgin Australia Regional Airlines and QantasLink Canberra operations being the most notable exception. But South-East Asia is a powerhouse for props, with more than 100 ATRs in Indonesia alone and more than a dozen operators in Malaysia and Indonesia combined. With this market viewing new developments, and the operating costs of turboprops still substantially lower than jet aircraft, what’s next for this crucial segment of the market?

Replacing earlier generations

Bombardier has forecast that the world’s airlines will need 5,770 aircraft in the class of the Dash 8 turboprop and the CRJ jet over the next 20 years. Across the Atlantic ATR’s most recent market forecast predicted 3,020 turboprops required, of which just 21 per cent would be in the 50-seater category with the remaining 2,390 aircraft in the 70-seater space.

Much of this demand is in the Asia Pacific, particularly in the ASEAN region, with growth emerging from dispersed island communities, growing middle classes, pilot shortages, ageing fleets of smaller aircraft, and limited ground infrastructure – all a natural driver of turboprop growth. From the Dash 8-100 and -200 to the Saab 340 and even the Dash 7, and a variety of other aircraft, there is a large market of small turboprops to replace.

At present, only ATR has an aircraft designed for this space in the shape of the ATR 42. So one of the big questions for Longview as it takes over the Dash 8 program is whether a new Q300 is an option.

“The market is showing a great cycle in the lower end of the market, and specifically 30-seater turboprops and 50-seater turboprops are very ‘old generation’ aircraft, delivered in the late 80s and 90s, and they’re all sitting for replacement,” Bertrand Pabon, head of market strategy at ATR, tells Australian Aviation.

“They’re ageing, and some of them have features such as short runway capability, namely the Dash 8-100 and -200. So, we are looking into incremental development, at shorter takeoff and landing capability on the ATR 42. We’re looking at redesigning the aircraft a bit to increase its performance, so that’s one axis,” Pabon explains.

That will see the ATR 42-600 gaining the ATR 72-600’s higher thrust engines, the use of the flap 25 position for takeoff, spoilers for landing, and updated brakes, as well as the use of the steep 5.5° approach angle.

Continued Pabon, “The other axis would be, incrementally as well, improving the maintenance costs of the aircraft, and for that we’re working with all our suppliers on the array of improvements in the design of the different parts.”

‘We’re looking at redesigning the aircraft a bit.’ BERTRAND PABON

ATR is even keen to replace significantly smaller aircraft, says Pabon. “Across the Pacific, we have a lot of good airlines represented there. They’re all opportunities for new routes. As the economy goes up, and the traffic goes up, there are probably also very good opportunities through the shorter takeoff and landing performer to prop it up a bit into the smaller segment of the 19-seater.”

But replacing the 30-50 seater market alone requires around 1,000 aircraft worldwide, Pabon says. One benefit of the generational leaps since the days of the Saab 340 and early Dash 8s, of course, is efficiency.

“Typically, rough numbers, when we conducted studies recently with Silver Air and Japan Air Commuter, what we observed is that the maintenance cost of these aging aircraft was so high that you could really probably compare with the ATR 42, which provides the same cash operating cost per trip, with additionally about 20 seats,” Pabon says.

Upgrade push into the 70-seater Market

Some operators are even looking to push higher, replacing 30-seaters with 70-seaters. Japan Air Commuter, part of the JAL group, started out with ATR 42s to replace its Saab 340s, but added a 72 with another on order.

Silver Airways, a present Saab 340 operator in the US, ordered “the ATR 42 mostly because they want to replace the Saab 340, but also have a look at the ATR 72 eventually,” Pabon says.

“You always have some cases of people who rethink their business model, which obviously is not a surprise. As soon as you’re getting a 42, you reconsider that the 42 may open the door with some similarities with the 72, then you have a combined fleet with strong commonality between the two products.”

This kind of fleet upsizing “probably repositions the business, following the regional sector, opening doors for probably new routes. And also market demands can spur … larger capacity in some cases,” Pabon says.

“But the fact that you can, through that commonality, maybe grow the business parameters and look at other opportunities in the market, is really valuable for the customer.”

He says that was an option denied customers in the past: “There was no real correlation between the Saab 340 and the Saab 2000, or even from a Dash 8-200 to a Dash 8-400. So, I think this is really valuable for the customer because it really leverages synergies between the two models.”

Bombardier’s current offering in this space is the Q400CC, standing for ‘cargo combi’, adding up to 3,720kg of cargo payload to the rear of the cabin. Ryukyu Air Commuter, a JAL‑affiliated regional in the southern islands of Okinawa, operates a 50-passenger, 2,540kg cargo payload version.

“The way we see the market going on this is, first of all, there’s less level of demand on the 50-seater turboprop. Investing in this would be very marginal,” Patrick Baudis, vice‑president marketing at Bombardier Commercial Aircraft, told Australian Aviation.

‘To justify a 50-seater with just passengers, is very difficult.’ PATRICK BAUDIS

“To justify a 50-seater with just passengers, is very difficult, so what we decided to do is to offer the Q400 as a cargo-combi airplane. Then you can get the economics that are right because you balance small capacity with the revenues of the cargo justifying the combined use.

“That’s where we see the market probably going as opposed to just a very high cost per seat 50-seater turboprop. And that’s why everybody moved up to larger aircraft,” Baudis says.

“You see the trends. The request now for 50-seater turboprops is very small because when you look at the economics, for a few passengers’ difference you can justify a 70 seater turboprop with all the upside available to sell.

“The economics on a per seat basis are very difficult to justify, so for those markets that really require a 50 seater and it’s very difficult to fill the rest, we would propose a Q400 cargo-combi.”

Baudis suggests that the move from an earlier Dash 8 model to the Q400CC would be “fairly transparent”, noting that, for airlines, “you just need to take benefit of the available cargo in the back and just set up a structure to sell that space and that volume.”

An upgraded Q300, however, would be a big job, Baudis says. “The fuselage is essentially the same with the Q300 but almost all of the systems I think between the two airplanes, there’s only about a five per cent parts commonality or so. All the other systems are different. The engine paneling is different. Again, we want to optimise it for a platform of this size with the Q400 versus just doing what would be a simple stretch where you’d compromise a lot on the performance, the payload capability, and such things.”

Longview’s decision may involve a different perspective than Bombardier’s, of course, and it might be interesting to see what an eventual DHC-8-300X might look like.

Turboprops environmental advantage

ATR’s Bertrand Pabon is very blunt about the fuel consumption, operating cost and environmental impact of smaller jets compared with turboprops, citing an 80 per cent higher fuel cost when comparing similar capacity aircraft.

“On a per-seat basis it starts to be quite heavy. It has an impact on the economics due to the fuel consumption and the weight of the aircraft. More powerful engines are more weighty, and on short sectors there’s a good share of all the landing fees and annual fees weighing quite a lot on the operating cost – all related to the maximum takeoff weight of the aircraft.”

“Typically, there’s no point having jets on small sectors, and the difference on a trip cost would be, with an equivalent – probably even the smaller E2-175, or even the A-market product [E-190] with 90 seats – you’ll get like a 50 per cent gap in terms of operating cost. This is huge,” Pabon says.

“First you need to have a high load factor to offset that, and second, it wouldn’t work if you want to get a bit of a reward with a really high revenue environment. That explains why these products are not penetrating in most of the countries in the world, apart from the US, where there is a strong legacy with Embraer and Bombardier, and they’re replacing the 50-seater. They have a pretty long range, and most of it is a higher yield market than you would find, probably, in the Pacific or in Asia.”

“Clearly, from an economic standpoint, it doesn’t work,” Pabon concludes.

To use a jet where a turboprop would do, “from an environmental standpoint, it’s nonsense, because (on) the same mission you increase the emissions by 80 per cent.”

He says that on shorter regional routes in Australia older jet aircraft generate a disproportionate amount of carbon emissions, local environmental impact and noise. Turboprops have lower profiles on all three.

Australian market

“We obviously have a strong opportunity in Australia,” says Pabon who views opportunity in eventual fleet changes including potential replacements for Saab 340s and Dash 8s.

With Asia Pacific the largest expected growth market for turboprops, he says he thinks “there is some potential to maybe recreate network opportunities and new routes in Australia. That’s on a case-by-case, and it depends on the ability of each airline, developing their own business case and network strategy.”

Across the Tasman, enthuses Pabon, “we’ve got a flagship operator with New Zealand there. They have a 50-seater fleet as well, and at some point we’ll look for a replacement opportunity as it goes on aging. That’s a Dash 8 fleet, of course. I understand that there is probably a need for smaller capacity as well as, probably, synergies with ATR 72, which they already own and operate.”

For Bombardier, says Patrick Baudis, the Q400CC cargo combi is the preferred option. “I can see that, for example in Australia, that would be a very good model because very often those planes, 50-seaters, serve very small communities out in the country … not just carrying passengers but they (the communities) also depend very much on the cargo from major cities.”

In Australia, explains Baudis, “what we see in terms of trends is a different way of operating the planes.”

Previously, he says, airlines flew turboprops from A to B in isolation from larger parts of their operations. “Generally speaking, more and more airlines now are integrating their turboprop flying into the mainline structure.”

“That’s where the Q400 has started to become very interesting for a lot of customers because it has the speed almost of a jet.

“It is still a turboprop so if you want to serve unpaved runways and very small communities it is exactly the plane you need. But yet it has the range and capability to board directly from the jetway, and so on and so forth.”

Indeed, turboprops are starting to look a lot more like jets, with more comfortable seating, larger bins, and refreshed cabins.

‘We see in terms of trends a different way of operating the planes.’ PATRICK BAUDIS

ATR’s Armonia cabin brand adds all that and includes an option for 18-inch-wide seats from Italian seatmaker Geven, the equivalent to an Airbus A320 and an inch wider than a Boeing 737, although it does come with a substantially reduced width in the armrest.

Bombardier has three seat offerings on the Q400, including ultra-light seats from Expliseat.

Both operators, meanwhile, have certified higher density models to cram in extra seats, down to a kneesquashing 28in in some cases, used primarily on low-cost services where there are no other options.

Turboprops are here to stay, and their role in serving regional, remote, rural and fly-in/fly-out operations will only increase over time as the number of jets capable of these missions continues to decline. Longview’s choices for the Viking- or de Havilland Canada-branded Dash 8 will be a bellwether from the perspective of an enthusiastic and knowledgeable third player in this market, and one without the internal competition from the CRJ Series.

In the booming Asia Pacific market, these capable little aircraft are ones to watch.

Towards a Hybrid Future

Numerous looking-glasses have been peered into over the years to try to spot the future of propulsion which will likely début in the regional market sometime between 2025 and 2035 if all the technologies line up correctly. ATR is giving the process a kick start by working with Air New Zealand on a project to take a closer look at the prospects for hybrid-electric aircraft.

“Hybrid aircraft are expected to enter the market in the next decade or so. Depending on when hybrid and electric technologies become available for larger turboprop aircraft, we believe there is potential for these to be a viable option for our regional network,” Air New Zealand chief executive officer Christopher Luxon says.

“Our regional fleet accounts for approximately 40 per cent of our domestic emissions so there’s an enormous opportunity for carbon savings. It could be a significant contributor to us reaching our twin goals of carbon neutral growth from 2020 and reducing emissions to 50 per cent of 2005 levels by 2050.”

“ATR has always been at the forefront of new technology, so it is natural that we are now exploring the new hybrid aircraft technology,” ATR chief engineer Stephane Viala tells Australian Aviation.

“In this context, we are investigating a wide range of hybrid technologies. We are looking at what technology is available on the market and what is in development. We are looking at classic hybrid propulsion as well as technology based on hydrogen. But as we have seen in the past with projects that have not managed to come to life, we need to learn from the past and be careful to not jump too quickly into the future.”

The objective, says Viala, “is to start defining what type of aircraft and in which timeframe a new regional aircraft could be developed. It is essential to have a strong knowledge and overview on this type of technology as well as operational impacts to launch a project of a new aircraft and be able to determine the length of implementation. And of course we will have to look at the economics of the whole operation and ecosystem in order to establish the right cost base.”

ATR’s involvement with Air New Zealand as a key turboprop operator is driven by a desire to be customer-centric, Viala says. “It is very important that we get operators on board quite early in the development of this new technology so we can understand how it will impact an airline’s operations. For example, we need to examine aircraft turnaround times for hybrid aircraft. We also need to study how we can get the aircraft certified from an operational standpoint. So we have not defined at the moment clearly the role of each stakeholder, but ATR will look at aircraft design taking into account airline inputs and constraints based on their current experience.”

Immediate questions revolve around the extent to which a new propulsion system will require a change in the geometry of the aircraft, and indeed the ecosystem that revolves around that aircraft: fuelling, maintenance, crew access, catering, passenger loading, cargo loading, and more. While it is true that many of these aspects are less high-pressure on a turboprop than on a larger airliner – catering, for example, is generally minimal on a turboprop – there’s certainly an argument to be made that starting with regional hoppers makes a lot of sense.

But what about the argument that an engine maker is crucial to this work? “Not necessarily,” says Viala. “It is perfectly feasible to examine propulsion technology without involving an engine manufacturer in the partnership. We are examining a range of options, so it is not necessary right now to involve specific engine suppliers who may be focusing on one specific solution. We would like to examine all of the options and possibilities of any potential new stakeholders to have as broad an overview as possible.”

Indeed, Viala says, “it is too early to select stakeholders such as suppliers. When discussing electrical motors, battery, fuel cells and so on, we will have to work with a variety of suppliers: not only will the airline ecosystem be impacted but the wider world of industry. Overall with regards to exploring this new technology, we are open to other partnerships from countries throughout the world.”

“New Zealand is definitely an ideal country to test hybrid aircraft technology,” Viala says, highlighting that 70 percent of the country’s electricity is already renewable.

“New Zealand is a country that believes strongly in protecting the environment and having renewable energy. It is also an island nation with its population spread more widely, making it a market reliant on regional aviation for connectivity and economic development.”

“Moreover,” Viala notes, “Air New Zealand has been an historical ATR customer since 1994. We developed the RNP-AR 0.3/0.3 with and for them. Air New Zealand has always provided us their feedback on maintenance topics and showed a strong interest in our aircraft, so it made perfect sense to work on the project hybrid aircraft with them.”

The work will start in early 2019, and the first stage will run for about a year in order to scope out what outcomes the airframer and airline want from the project: potentially a feasibility report or operational testing that takes another step towards a lower-impact aviation future.