The expert view: ‘Often misunderstood’
Angus von Schoenberg, Industry Officer at TrueNoord, a lessor specialising in the regional aircraft market, considers the segment for turboprop aircraft seating more than 50 passengers.
The market for larger turboprops is often misunderstood. Consider an Airbus A320 and Boeing 737. They are essentially similar, competing aircraft. Applying the same thinking to the ATR 72 and Dash 8-400 is wrong. They might be a similar size, but they do very different things.
For an operator that is based at a hot-and-high airport, an ATR 72 just can’t do the job unless it carries a reduced payload, but the Dash 8 can operate without restriction.
In the large turboprop world, you need to know the industry from a detailed, operational point of view.
Currently the ATR 72-600 is the only 70-seater turboprop in production, with nearly 700 aircraft delivered so far.
Dash 8-400 production ceased after the last delivery in 2021, when some 500 had been manufactured, but De Havilland Canada is working towards restarting production.
This could comprise either or both of an upgraded Dash 8-400 or a 50-seater Dash 8-300, but no formal commitment has been announced.
De Havilland is the only manufacturer that has produced a short take-off and landing (STOL) aircraft in the over 37-seat turboprop segment and it has a loyal customer base, often among operators with short runway constraints or other performance requirements.
As well as the Dash 8-400, what many Dash 8 operators really need is a new STOL-200/300 model, but the market for that capability is small – maybe no more than 200 aircraft globally.
Post-Covid, several Dash 8-400s were withdrawn, particularly in Europe. Some, although not many, remain parked – not because of a lack of demand, but because of the cost of returning them to airworthiness.
To address this, De Havilland Canada has been buying small groups of these aircraft and returning them into the market.
For customers who want a brand new large turboprop, the only choice remains ATR, and a single-choice market is not healthy.
We saw this when the CRJ100/200 was launched in the 1990s. It did not sell well until the Embraer 145 came along, because airlines want competition and choice.
The result is usually that the manufacturer with the previous monopoly also ends up selling more, as happened in this case, but unlike ATR and the Dash 8, the CRJ and E145 perform more similarly.
ATR launched its hybrid EVO concept some years ago, but the pre-Covid euphoria about electric aircraft has cooled, with some players in that market disappearing, as have some working on other alternative propulsion technologies, including Universal Hydrogen.
Others, like Heart Aerospace, are making progress. There is a broad consensus that the turboprop space is where we will see alternative propulsion working first.
As a turboprop lessor, TrueNoord must consider whether new technologies could cause today’s new ATR to become obsolete and depreciate faster over the next decade than it would normally have done.
It’s one of the reasons why we’re taking an interest in the new technologies. You could say that yes, the asset could depreciate more quickly, but there is an alternative view which is that some of the new technologies will retrofit into existing airframes.
This is what, for example, ZeroAvia intends to offer. There comes a time where a turboprop engine’s life limited parts (LLP) life limit, generally at 15,000 cycles for a PW127, means an overhaul is required. Today, the cost of that work is around USD 2 million.
There is a logic which suggests that an operator could opt to buy a new aircraft, operate it to the LLP life limit and then invest the USD 2 million per engine overhaul cost into electrification.
It’ll cost even more, but the result is an alternative-propulsion aircraft that might last another 15 years or perhaps even longer than a conventional aeroplane.
Download the full article as PDF
Article courtesy of LARA Magazine
1 July 2025
