At a huge fac­to­ry com­plex in Toulouse, the avi­a­tion man­u­fac­tur­ing hub in the south of France, work­men for the Eu­ro­pean joint ven­ture air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er, ATR, are putting the fin­ish­ing touch­es on the first of nine tur­bo­props the com­pa­ny will de­liv­er to state-owned Caribbean Air­lines Ltd over the next ten months.

When the Busi­ness Guardian vis­it­ed the high-tech cen­tre, which is next door to the Air­bus fa­cil­i­ty, the work­men were just get­ting ready to in­stall the seats, hav­ing re­cent­ly paint­ed on the colour­ful hum­ming­bird that oc­cu­pies the wings of CAL air­craft. Speak­ing with the Busi­ness Guardian, ATR's chief ex­ec­u­tive, Fil­ip­po Bag­na­to, said: "The over­all pic­ture is that Trinidad is not alone in se­lect­ing ATR.

"In 2011 alone, we have re­ceived 145 firm or­ders, which rep­re­sents over 80 per cent of all re­gion­al air­craft sales (from 50 to 90-seats) since the be­gin­ning of the year." He said ATR's main com­peti­tor in the 50 to 90-seat cat­e­go­ry had on­ly re­ceived sev­en or­ders up to the end of Sep­tem­ber when the in­ter­view took place.

At the same time, these 145 air­planes have en­abled ATR to reach a new record for its or­der book, which has grown to 275 air­craft and is val­ued at US$6.2 bil­lion. This back­log rep­re­sents near­ly four years of pro­duc­tion. It al­so rep­re­sents 68 per cent of the to­tal back­log of 50 to 90-seat re­gion­al air­craft, there­by con­firm­ing the re­newed in­ter­est in tur­bo­prop tech­nol­o­gy."CAL has se­lect­ed a suc­cess­ful air­craft. Don't on­ly lis­ten to the man­u­fac­tur­er, lis­ten to the oth­er air­lines that are buy­ing the air­craft in record num­bers," said Bag­na­to. What's more, Bag­na­to said that ATR has dom­i­nat­ed the air­craft cat­e­go­ry for the last five years with 65 per cent of the air­craft sold. Dur­ing the tour of the fa­cil­i­ties, of­fi­cials said the ATR 72-600, which is a tur­bo prop, has clear ad­van­tages over sim­i­lar ca­pac­i­ty air­craft that are jets, es­pe­cial­ly on short routes, such as Trinidad to To­ba­go, Trinidad to Grena­da or Trinidad to Bar­ba­dos.

ATR more eco­nom­i­cal

Al­though the ATR flies at 550 kilo­me­tres per hour com­pared with the 700 kph of the Dash-8, the dif­fer­ence be­tween take­off and touch down on short routes is min­i­mal. Of­fi­cials of the com­pa­ny ar­gue that the op­er­at­ing cost for the ATR 72-600 is low­er than the Q-400 and the Dash-8 air­craft that is its main com­peti­tor. When com­pared with the Dash-8, the ATR 72-600 has low­er ac­qui­si­tion cost, bet­ter fu­el ef­fi­cien­cy, low­er main­te­nance cost and low­er land­ing fees. On­ly last week Cab­i­net con­sid­ered a note con­cern­ing CAL in which the air­line con­firmed that it ex­pects to take pos­ses­sion of two ATRs this year and sev­en next year. Of the nine new air­craft, five will be al­lo­cat­ed to Trinidad op­er­a­tions, three to the Ja­maican op­er­a­tions and one will fly car­go ex­clu­sive­ly. The air­line is cur­rent­ly fly­ing two wet-leased ATRs