PARIS (Reuters) – Franco-Italian turboprop maker ATR has secured 22 firm aircraft orders, including a deal for six planes with Taiwanese regional carrier Mandarin Airlines, CEO Nathalie Tarnaud Laude said on Tuesday.
“The Asian market is taking off,” Tarnaud Laude said at the Paris Airshow, adding she expects more orders this year.
Fabrice Vautier, ATR’s SVP Commercial, said the planemakers is seeing more traffic in Asia than before COVID, helped by demand from India.
The world’s largest turboprop maker secured an additional two options and remains on track to achieve a target of more than 40 deliveries in 2023 despite supply chain tensions, the manufacturer said.
ATR delivered 25 aircraft in 2022, which was below expectations. The company wants to deliver 80 aircraft a year by the second part of the decade.
Tarnaud Laude said she expects to have competition driven by new technology for ATR’s EVO hybrid aircraft expected to enter service in 2030.
A decision by Brazilian planemaker Embraer to delay a proposed turboprop indicates they might have been looking at a similar concept, she said.
“It shows probably that their initial plan was to come up on the market with a similar technology aircraft,” she said. “I can’t see them coming back with the same technology that we have,” she added.
ATR is jointly owned by planemaker Airbus and Italian aerospace group Leonardo.
(Reporting by Allison Lampert; editing by Jason Neely)
