'ATR can provide advantages to Indian civil aviation industry'

Bangalore, Feb 8 (UNI) The turbo rotor-based ATR aircraft, which is highly cost-effective and less polluting when compared to small jets, can prove highly advantageous to the burgeoning Indian aviation industry, ATR Chief Executive Officer Filippo Baganto said today.

Speaking to reporters at the company's pavilion at Aero India - 2007 here, he said the main factors influencing higher demand for turboprops world over recently was the economics and pressure on costs, strong competition in the market on price and high fuel costs.

Mr Baganto said India, despite a population of more than one billion people, had fewer than 240 commercial planes, with only 20 million passengers using the domestic network, while the railways carried an equal number of people on a single day.

However, the booming economy and a rapidly growing 250 million middle class had resulted in the beginning of a revolution in the airline industry. New and old airliners in India had ordered for nearly 400 different types of aircraft during the last 12 months.

Key opportunities were likely in the second and regional routes, compared to major trunk routes, and turboprops manufactured by companies like ATR would be best suited for such services.

Mr Baganto said lack of infrastructure had been the main concern.

Congested big airports, badly served rural regions and dearth of pilots were the bottlenecks the country had to urgently overcome.

Rapid growth in domestic seat capacity, which had grown at 40 per cent last year, and fierce competition for market share had led to the imbalance between yield and costs, resulting in losses to the airline industry, he added.

In 2006, the France-based ATR had secured 63 firm orders plus 25 options. The orders since January 2005 had gone up to 155, which included orders from 13 airlines. The company, which had a 60 per cent market share, had a backlog of 126 aircraft due to steep rise in world demand, he said.

He said the soaring fuel prices had hit the world airline industry hard with fuel bills rising from 23 billion US dollars in 2003 to 112 billion Dollars last year.

The fuel cost represented 26 per cent of the airline cost and replacing 10 to 70-seater regional jets with turboprops could generate up to 45,000 tons of fuel savings in a span of five years.

UNI