If a 35 seat airliner is as uneconomic as you claim maybe you could explain how the DHC6-400 which only seats 19 has a healthy order book.

There are many factors at play here, for example island flights are often subsidised for social and development reasons. Thin feeder routes are often subsidised by the airlines that they feed. Many destinations in remote and less developed areas can only be served by STOL aircraft, etc.

Cargo,

Please accept a minor correction, with respect!

The SF34 was offered in a number of flexible configurations. As a 34 seater it can accommodate up to 38 persons with the last 5 being infants in infant seat belts and of course subject to an individual State's operational regulations. Several SF34's were produced originally for the Japanese market with 36 full size passenger seats (12 seat rows with a forward (galley/toilet)) combination and these are now all in Australia. There was even a 'Combi' version produced for combining passengers with freight and this model too is in Australia.

The SB 2000 is even more flexible and was offered with 47 to 50 passenger seats and a full width "hot" aft galley and all of the original airframes were produced to this specification. Saab, however, offer a modification to the SB 2000 which replaces the aft galley with the forward (galley/toilet) which then provides for up to 58 passenger seats in the existing airframe.

On short haul flights (and 60 minutes in an SB2000,depending on variables of wind and temperature, etc., equates to between a 340 to 370 NM operating radius) the cabin could be quite tolerable for most passengers. Particularly so if Saab were to remanufacture with the new, slimline and more comfortable passenger seating which was showcased at their last two annual operators conferences.

Oracle,

Honestly those seats were not looking trustworthy at all to me, I don't believe they are robust enough. We've recently installed new super slim seats on a jet fleet and there is no comparison in how they constructed.

Spot on.

Revenue required per passenger per hour, at a realistic load factor, and taking into account direct and indirect operating costs (and profit) illustrates perfectly why the 19-50 seat market is now so unattractive to manufacturers (Saab included).

Much though I love the Twotter, classing it as an "airliner" is stretching things a bit - it has always been aimed at markets where its short-field performance is a bonus and/or its lack of pressurisation doesn't matter.

Indeed, but the passengers realise that short flights into difficult places are expensive. For the extreme example of a high seat/mile ticket cost take a look at Westray to Papa Westray.

If the punters are willing to pay you can make a profit.

Oracle, one of those full 36 seat variant SF340s is actually in the Loganair Fleet in Scotland. They have a mix of 33, 34 and 36 seat 340s. Nothing can do what those SAABs currently do, day in day out, in all weather, up to 35 kt crosswind. Nothing compares to the load they carry and frequency of operations in all weather for that type of business. The US operators may have relegated them to warmer climes, but the UK, Europe and Scandinavia certainly have not (and you don't see them falling out of the sky here). If you actually fly the aircraft the way SAAB specify in the AFM in icing conditions, then they are good, solid and safe machines. It's actually airspeed (or lack of) in icing conditions that kills, not ice. Respect for these flying conditions, crew training and adherance SOPs keep things safe. I'd take a SAAB 340 over a J41 any day. If they can come up with an affordable flight deck and cabin upgrade (and maybe even an engine intake anti-ice upgrade) they will still be hard to beat in 10 years time on this type of route network.

In the USA and southern europe there are good road and rail links almost everywhere so short haul airlines are under price pressure and it may be difficult to make smaller aircraft pay.

As soon as the geography gets in the way the alternatives become less credible or often non-existant. In these cases an airline can charge whatever it takes and the passengers will pay. Few pasengers will consider heaving their guts up for hours on a ferry in rough seas when there is an island hopping airline available unless they are seriously skint.
Even fewer will have the courage to face the roads in (for example) Nepal or the Andes.

Aircraft development
 

We'll be all flying props in the future it seems:
Prop Planes: The Future of Eco-Friendly Aviation?

However, SAAB seems to have a winning formula and looking at potential cost to come up with revamped design the non-recurring cost will certainly be smaller than that of a new design.

Non-recurring
Engineering
Tooling
Development Support
Flight Test

Recurring
Recurring Costs
Engineering
Tooling
Manufacturing
Material
Quality Assurance

Geek: I think this is precisely SAAB's strategy looking at where their current models are operating.

What Saab have done in the past doesn't necessarily have any bearing at all on their future strategy.

I'd be surprised if they are spending any time at all debating on whether to warm over a 1980s design.

Cash rich? Saab is bankrupt - at least the car division - and seems thank god to be bought by a investor interested in producing electric cars.

@grimmrad:

No they are not. Saab Automobile is a completely seperate company and only shares a name with Saab AB, which is the one who used to make civil aircraft but nowadays mostly does defense technology work including the Saab fighter jets.

Thats like saying, "Rolls-Royce is bankrupt--at least the car division..."

Geek - the number of places where people are rich enough to pay whatever it takes to fly rather than take a ferry is seriously limited

Even the Scilly Islands - hardly the 3rd world - has people using the damn ferry rather than pay the cost of flying - and that truly is awful an awful boat

The Scillies are a rather odd case because the ferry and the airline are operated by the same company. In general the ferry caters for more local traffic from Cornwall whereas the Twotters are aimed at the longer haul from Bristol, Exeter and London via Newquay. In season, however, it is almost impossible to get an air ticket unless you book months in advance so the ferry takes up the slack and passengers face a long road trip of, for example, 4 hours from Bristol to the ferry.

The Twotters make a good profit because they are full for most of the year.

This situation effectively limits the number of visitors to suit the limited accommodation on the islands.

Many of the airports in Hawaii are unable to support larger aircraft and currently are only serviced by Caravans. This makes service unreliable because in the US single engine aircraft essentially cannot fly IMC unless the visibility ad ceiling is such that they can break out of the clouds and be within gliding distance to shore. This poses a problem at a number of airports.

Additionally there is poor road infrastructure to and from the towns serviced so air travel is the only practical means of transportation. The loads don't warrant a Q400 or even an ATR-42 so a 19-seat aircraft like a DHC-6 is the only sensible option. Currently none service these airports due to their atrocious acquisition price. DHC-8 aircraft service a number of the rural communities but can barely pull a 50% load factor. Pricing must be kept low so the airlines operate a slow loss, only supplemented by tourist destinations where they can charge more during peak travel months.

This is a scene repeated all over the world, in Canada, Alaska, South America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Just because a 19-seat or 30-seat airliner doesn't make sense from London to Frankfurt or Chicago to Cleveland doesn't mean there is no market for other models. The number of DHC-6, DHC-8-100 and BE-1900 aircraft in service speak to the need for many air carriers to produce a 30-40 seat airliner with equivalent operating costs.

Getting the best CASM isn't always the most practical assessment of an aircraft. If you can only fill 40% of your Q400 maybe it isn't the aircraft for that market.

Flying a 19 seat airplane in the US under part 121 rules tends not to be cost effective... Twin Otters, as much as I love them, don't qualify anyway.

"Pricing must be kept low"

exactly - which is why most of us don't think there is a serious market for a new build (or seriously updated ) SAAB

The price which can be charged for a flight depends on the alternative methods of getting to the same place.

If the flight is the only viable way to get there the price is irrelevant, there are plenty of places in the world where there is no viable alternative. OTOH in developed nations such as the USA there is almost always a good road or rail link which just takes more time. Here the extra cost of the flight needs to be justified against the cheaper but longer option and prices are under pressure.

Contrary to common belief life does exist outside of the USA. :)

Yeah I know they aren't Part 25 or Commuter category certified. there are waivers, in fact one operator (whose name escapes me at the moment, I apologize) is currently operating Twin Otters under Part 121. The Beech 1900D seems to be a good 19-seat airliner that's still in fairly heavy use even in the US. Great Lakes operates a fleet of 32 of them.

But generally I do agree the 19-seat is the bottom of the airliner world and thus difficult to make profitable. However if you can only sell 15 seats on a leg on average then a 19-seat option is certainly more cost effective than a 37-seat or 78-seat option.

My point was that how profitable an aircraft can be on a route is linked with how many seats can be expected to be sold on that route. Overarching comments like "there is no market for a 30-seat airliner" is flawed by the assumption that markets can yield growth beyond 20-30 passengers per leg. There are many markets worldwide that can't grow beyond that and still require air service.

Island

I don't think we nay-sayers disagree that there are routes which can only be reasonably flown by small aircraft - the problem is how many passengers can you get to pay the price needed for lease/purchase of an up-to-date aircraft

When you go around places like the S Pacific either the countries subsidise (very heavily) the service or they are v small aircraft or they are very old aircraft

hence a replacement market exists :ok:

The purchase cost, loosely coupled with DOCs, is the problem, not how many passengers, and at the root of it all is the incestuous nature of the aviation industry that closes (or refuses to open) the door to the multitude of small, innovative companies that could drive down component prices and ultimately whole airframe costs.

Neither does it help that the industry has responded to the many challenges of recent years by increasingly distancing itself from the public upon which it is dependent. That public provides paying passengers but could also offer novel commercial partnerships. The ideas are there, but the welcome is not.

Another major issue is the security circus which has added an extra hour to checkin times, reducing the time advantage of short haul flights over the road or rail alternatives.

The less time saved, the less passengers are prepared to pay for a ticket.

Air travel was a pleasant and convenient experience, now it has become a pain in the backside for passengers who are increasingly voting with their feet.

Celtic

many people have lost a great deal of money backing "small innovative Aerospace companies"

normally they completely underestimate the challenges they face and the time and costs involved and go bust

it's a great dream that somehow we're going to see innovative technologies at low cost but the record shows that it doesn't happen

Harry,

With respect to the Swedish population overall, Saab's aerospace division could be considered "small and innovative", but with so many 'firsts' behind them since they started building aircraft in the 1930's only a naive person would underestimate Saab's capabilites and experience.

Saab succesfully launched the Scandia 90 airliner in 1946 and in a tough post WW2 market produced 18 airframes with the entire fleet later sold to Vasp in Sao Paulo Brazil. Could this aircraft have led to the genesis of Embraer? Considering this was done immediately after the war and with all the associated shortages of raw materials, manufacturing infrastructure, etc, it was an amazing effort.

Saab also produced the J29 Tunnan in 1948 and it was the first post WW2 swept wing jet fighter in europe.

The Saab 340 first flew in 1983 with the wings originally supplied by Fairchild in the U.S.. Fairchild left the partnership after 40 aircraft and Saab increased their manufacturing capacity to include the wings and produced a total of 459 aircraft.

In all this Saab has experienced the vagaries and disappointments of aircraft manufacturng and profited from some spectacular successes.

For a small country with a total population of less that 10 million Saab certainly qualifies as a "small and highly innovative aerospace company", but they have consistently 'punched above their weight' and achieved success by doing things differently from others. And such differences include sticking with their own perception of what constitutes a market opportunity and identifying the risks involved.

But that is normal in the wider business world, especially in any activity that involves technology. It's the foundation of progress.

For reasons that are understandable amongst pilots, there is a terror of failure of any kind but this fear doesn't help the industry evolve. Think about it: for the last twenty years school children all over the world have been designing and building experimental processes and devices and sending them into space for testing and evaluation. Where is the opportunity for a motivated adolescent to "mess about" in aerotechnology and see his/her fifteenth wacky idea accepted as a sheer bloody brilliant? The irony is that the multitude of regulations imposed upon the aviation sector are largely reactive and fail to take account changes taking place in society or business.

Fortunately, it looks like some of the fissures in the system will soon develop into gaping holes and we will all, finally, benefit from useful cross-fertilsation.

I tend to agree with Oracle. Not only have they (the swedes) produced very good aircraft but to compete successfully with US government financial backing and still succeed is remarkable.

I'm sure something very exciting will emerge contradictory to the Poms who have sold most of their industry and banks to the germans.

A very good friend of mine is a Swedish TRE and he maintains an ultra low profile, just like SAAB. Don't talk, just DO and DELIVER. SAAB aircraft has a record of doing just that with quality.

Flight this week remarks that almost every commercial jetliner built today looks like planes designed and built in the late 50's and 60's and that neither manufacturers nor buyers are willing to make a major investment in anything dramatically new

the only really innovative aircraft designer of the last 30 years has been Bert Rutan TBH and he has been building (relatively) small aircraft

I suspect that more aerospace effort is going into designing lighter seats and better cabin electronics than in any new airframe design these days

I agree it's a pity but that's the world we live in - dominated by the money men

I think Saab producing an all new aircraft on their own is an illusion. However there are many parties who would like to be involved in the developing countries. There seems to be demand for 100 seat aircraft, operating with jet like speed and comfort inbetween traditional RJ's on the bigger jets, with better efficiency. In 08 on a.net we created a kind of "Super 340" the Centiliner. A narrow 5 abreast or premium 4 abreast.

http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z...iliner01-1.jpg

When I was actively involved as a pilot in the general aviation world, it was always an unfortunate truth that propellers were second-class and an automatic downer. People would lead clients or friends out to their super-hot Cheyenne 400 or Avanti or top-of-the-line King Air, and the reaction invariably was, "Jeez, I thought you said you had a JET, not a little prop plane..."

Certainly passengers troop out to RJs without a care and are repelled by equally large, and often equally sophisticated, turboprops. Would this be a factor in airlines' choices of aircraft, or are they purely driven by operating economies?

Step,

In the mid 1990's, when jet fuel was very cheap, RJ salespersons coined the term "prop avoidance" to foster RJ flying with a vew to further sales and had great success in this regard. Over in europe Crossair at that time conducted exit interview surveys with de-planing turbo passengers to gauge whether such an effect crossed the atlantic and had entered the psyche of their passengers.

Crossairs studies determined that provided there were on-time departures and that fares were reasonable and schedules were convenient, they (european passengers) weren't overly concerned as to whether there was a prop on the motor or otherwise. Corssair specifically canvassed passenger thoughts on safety and their results concluded that their passengers had faith in both the competence of technical staff and the design safety of their turbo conveyance.

Crossair, in this case, ultimately concluded that european passengers were more sophisticated than their american counterparts and not given to responding to marketing campaigns that questioned the safety of the turboprop aircraft.

I wonder whether it's "safety" that prop avoiders are questioning, though, or simply some kind of perceived second-best status. Certainly the latter is what has always prevented sophisticated prop-driven aircraft from making serious inroads into the midrange of the market--i.e. versus Citations, Lears, Hawkers and the like.

Quite an irony that later on Crossair replaced all their Saabs for ERJs :}

Yes, but who says that companies always do the right thing? Mother wants jets, so we give mother jets, after all mother pays for it. And ATC complained the Saabs were to slow in approach....

Funny enough the same ATC afterwards complained that the Jets were too fast...

The only thing one really should believe is the P&L, the rest is nonsense. And if there is one manufacturer who has shown in the past that they can produce a superior product for less money than the rest, then it is Saab.

Everything that has been said about a lot of the operators of the present is true, but the reasoning behind maybe not. There definitely is a market. There are reasons why people fly even in small quantities from one place to another and pay quite a substantial amount for it. Otherwise all those aircraft would simply not be operated. Is it not more due to the fact that these are the only aircraft available that they are used by the so-called third tier airlines? And is it not more because they are aging, requiring a whole lot of maintenance that the barely manage to make a profit?

Lease rates and financing terms are not the real problem today, it is the cost of fuel and maintenance, and at least in Europe, the absurd amounts for 'security' and other passenger related rip-offs that make the aircraft having a problem to operate making money. However, a lot of these restrictions do not apply in the rest of the world.

As always, KISS is the real determining factor. Anything else is making things complex and expensive. If anything speed is not the imperative, it is simplification, easiness of maintenance and fuel efficiency. The last one is entirely on the engine manufacturers and that may be the real stumbling block.

2007:
TGAM STORY
2012:
WestJet picks Bombardier Q400 planes for new service | CTV News

WestJet are by no means alone, airline CEOs make U-turns almost as often as politicians.

Anyone remember this?

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2100/1...b7211e1b_z.jpg

That was before Virgin bought their A330s. :O

The new slogan is:

2 engines 2 save money

I love those 30 seat TPs! But as much as I love them, I find it very difficult for a new project to even see the light of day without a big order.
And that order needs to come from a big player or players, just like happened with the last 19/30-seat generation. And then, over the years, those frames will steer to the smaller airlines and start ups. Just like they do today with those SF34, B1900, SW4, DHC8 etc.

There is no evidence that 19/30 seats is the market Saab are looking at, that's simply an assumption.

They were in that market once, that doesn't necessarily mean they want to be again.

They were also in a 50 seat TP and got their financial fingers very badly burned. I would think Saab's shareholders would be a little more skeptical this time.