Aer Lingus ATR 72-600 at Cork Airport (ORK/EICK)
Taken by Lauren Jordan @irelandspotter on IG
Today, ATR announced that they are looking to reduce their aircraft productions. This is due for the decreasing need for aircraft during this crisis. Airbus owns 50% of the company has already announced last month that they are reducing production targets. Now, ATR are also considering going down the same route as Airbus. This drop in output is still going ahead even though ATR has had an increase in orders recently.
ATR's CEO, Stefano Bortoli said to Reuters that the company was planning to reduce their aircraft output in 2020. There has been a great drop in demand due to difficulties in delivering aircraft. However, their part-owner Airbus has began contactless aircraft delivery. For more information on this click here.
The aircraft production company already delivered 68 aircraft this year. It is unclear how much their output figure will drop but Bortoli added that: 'Of course we are going to reduce; we will see later how much.' The company was doing brilliantly in recent years. ATR's sales went up by over 50% from 52 units to 79 in 2019!
In July 2019, it was reported that 13 airlines used over 15 ATR 72 variants for commercial use. This includes Irish operators Stobart Air and ASL Airlines Ireland. However, there has been military uses for these aircraft for Italian Air Force and Guardia di Finanza and the Pakistani and Turkish Navy. Moreover, ATR's final assembly line is based in Airbus hub, Toulouse in France. They own 50% of the company while Italian aerospace company, Leonardo own the other half. ATR's main aircraft produced are the ATR 42 and ATR 72. There are a myriad of different ranges of these aircraft. However, we mostly see -500 and -600 variants flying in the skies today.
The ATR 42-600 is a short haul aircraft that sits 48 passengers with a seat pitch of 30 inches. The ATR 72-600 sits 70 passengers with the exact same pitch. However, the initial design for the ATR 72 was that it would only hold 66 passengers. They modified the aircraft's interior instead of extending the fuselage to accommodate these extra 6 passengers.
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