FLUG REVUE April 2004: Embraer 190 rolls out

EMBRAER 190 ROLLS OUT

By Patrick Hoeveler

“This plane is our passport to the First World,” proclaimed Geraldo Alckmin, Governor of the state of Sao Paulo, with pride. On 9 February, before some 2000 invited guests and 8000 workers, the Embraer 190, the biggest aircraft ever to have been developed and built in Brazil, rolled out of

the hangar in Sao José dos Campos. Even President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva acknowledged this 108-passenger airliner as a sign of the international competitiveness of his country.

And launch customer JetBlue Airways has ambitious plans for the latest member of the Embraer 170 family, too, as David Neeleman, CEO of the American low-fares airline, declared. The 100-seater market, he said, would open up 1,000 new city pairs in the USA. 50 new destinations could be flown from Washington DC and Boston alone. If only he could, Neeleman would happily take delivery of the aircraft right now. As well as extra routes, he also plans to use the 190 to provide a more effective service to destinations for which demand is seasonal, for example, in the Caribbean, but also in Canada and the Midwest of the USA. During the high season, JetBlue flies Airbus A320's, but off-season the smaller Embraer 190 will be deployed on some routes.

However, Neeleman will have to wait until the third quarter of 2005 to take delivery of the first of his 100 aircraft on order, when the jet, which comes with a list price of $30 million, is expected to be certified. Apart from JetBlue, another customer, which wishes to remain anonymous, has also ordered the product. Recently the 100-seater scored a scoop when Air Canada passed over its compatriot, Embraer's arch rival Bombardier, in its favour. Contract negotiations with Embraer are currently under way.

Meanwhile in Brazil the engineers are preparing for flight testing, for which a total of four aircraft have been earmarked. The company is bustling with activity: by the middle of this year three prototypes should in the air. The first production standard aircraft will follow at the end of 2004. On top of this, the engineers are using another airframe for static tests and a section comprising wing and centre fuselage for fatigue testing. The maiden flight of prototype 190-001 is planned for the end of February/beginning of March 2004. The tests are being carried out in the newly built flight test centre in Gaviao Peixoto. Prototype 190-002 is already in the advanced stages of final assembly in Sao José dos Campos.

The 190 bears an unmistakable resemblance to the shorter 170. Embraer is advertising the benefits of commonality between the two types, which include the cockpit and the fly-by-wire control system. 85 percent of the parts are identical. Commonality with the biggest member of the family, the 195, whose maiden flight is scheduled for the third quarter of 2004, with certification expected in the second quarter of 2006, is as high as 95%.

According to Luís Carlos Affonso, Senior Vice President Engineering and New Product Development, the main differences are a 6.34m longer fuselage, which incorporates two extra segments, a larger wing with higher fuel capacity and the more powerful CF34-10E engine instead of the CF34-8E. Certification of the new powerplant from GE Aircraft Engines is expected shortly. However, the CF34-10E is a new design based largely on the CFM56 (see FLUG REVUE 9/2003). Moreover, the Brazilian 100-seater's horizontal stabiliser is two metres longer and its landing gear, manufactured by Liebherr, has been reinforced. Over 1200 hours in Dutch, French and Russian wind tunnels have made “smooth development with low risk”, as Affonso puts it, possible.

The aluminium and titanium wings are built by Kawasaki, whose contribution towards the 170 wing is confined to sections of the leading and trailing edges. The 190 wing assembly is now under way in Gaviao Peixoto in a plant specially built for this purpose by Kawasaki Aeronáutica do Brasil (KAB). Two sets of wings have been assembled here in one-and-a-half months each. According to industrial director Mitsuro Ebina, four pairs will leave the plant every month once full production gets under way in the third quarter of 2004. They will then be transported by truck and special trailer to Sao José dos Campos, a journey of five to six hours. At the moment most of the parts come from Japan and Canada (skin), but from the end of this year, the Brazilian workshare will rise to include segments such as ribs and spars.

In the meantime, by the time this issue appears, the Embraer 170 should have been fully certificated, the date having slipped several times since it was originally set for the beginning of 2003. As we went to press, Embraer was expecting certification on 19/20 February 2004.

In any event, the 13th and latest version (“Silver Label”) of the flight control software arrived in Sao José dos Campos on the Tuesday morning after the rollout of the 190, having been delivered in the hands of a Honeywell employee from Phoenix. Once this final version of the software is approved, it will take the engineers just a few hours each to install it on the other aircraft with which the plant now abounds. “We have many more aircraft on the plant today than I would like to see,” says CEO Maurício Botelho. He is hoping to get eleven Embraer 170's out to customers by the end of March. Apparently about fifteen planes are already finished and have been fitted with an extra 50kg of insulating material to reduce the noise level in the cabin.

Production was not originally planned to be stepped up to the rate of eight 170's per month for another two to three years, but now Embraer is aiming to achieve this by the end of 2004. By then, the fourth largest aircraft manufacturer in the world wants to have handed 53 aircraft over to customers.

When it comes to final assembly of the 170/190, there is no production line as on the ERJ-145 series, the 800th example of which is expected to roll out in April. The big jets are being built using a dock system, in which it is the tools and materials that move rather than the aircraft. This is Embraer's way of compensating for the different build times of the 170 and the 190. Maximum capacity is 11 aircraft per month.

The Embraer 175 plays little role in these calculations so far, due to lack of orders. The two prototypes for this jet, which can accommodate up to 86 passengers, have completed around 250 flying hours. Certification has been put back from the third to the fourth quarter of 2004. The original launch customer, Jet Airways of India, had postponed indefinitely the signing of a contract for the purchase of the Embraer 175 due to the difficult market situation. As Botelho hinted, should the Indian airline renew its interest at some future date, it will have to go through another round of negotiations.

If one believes the Embraer strategists, who have now invested a total of $850 million in development, the new aircraft family has a golden future ahead of it. “There is a change in scenario,” says Maurício Botelho. Recovery, he says, is already under way in niche markets, such as the low-cost and the regional markets, even though the present crisis is more serious than the one ten years ago. “Those who are adopting a new model succeed. Those who live in the past are dead.”

This means that the prospects for the “Gang of Four”, which the Marketing department refers to as “e-jets” (the “e” standing amongst other things for ergonomics, economics and efficiency), are good, as Orlando Neto, Director of Market Intelligence, explains. In the last few years, he says, there has been a huge increase in the number of routes flown by the low-cost airlines, both in the USA and in Europe. But only a limited number of city pairs can offer the high frequencies and load factors needed to make large aircraft profitable. Hence aircraft size is declining. At the same time, among the regionals the 50-seat market is undergoing a natural, upward evolution. It is this gap between 70 and 110 seats that Embraer hopes to fill. Neto therefore does not rule out discussions with Southwest and European no-frills airlines, but leasing companies like GECAS, which is already a customer, have also been showing interest in the jets. Among the guests who attended the rollout ceremony was for example Steven Udvar-Hazy, president and CEO of ILFC.

Altogether, Embraer aims to export 160 jets this year. On top of this, it is hoping for an order from the Star Alliance, although here it is competing not only with Bombardier but also with the Airbus A318 and the Boeing 717. In the 90 to 110-seat market, the Brazilians are aiming for a conservative market share of 25%. All in all, Neto is confident: “We will have a very interesting year, starting very soon.” On the prospect of competition from Bombardier at the higher end of the market segment, he is quite relaxed: he doubts whether a super-efficient regional jet with around 100 seats and new technology could be introduced to the market by 2010. But by then, many of the major orders will have already been placed.

At any rate, the Brazilians are investing heavily in the future. Embraer's strategy for dealing with the problem of an ageing population of engineers and the general scarcity of skilled labour has been to initiate a special programme for young engineers whose background is not in aerospace, as a kind of “think tank”. 464 engineers have already been trained since 2002. At present they are even considering the possibility of training engineers from supplier companies. There is a lot of interest here, especially from the USA. The trainee engineers are currently working on an exercise to develop a 174-seat passenger aircraft. Yet, Maurício Botelho has no plans at the moment to move beyond a 118-seat aircraft, which would be tantamount to finally invading the territory of Airbus and Boeing. Nevertheless, he is prepared to gaze into the crystal ball: perhaps in the distant future, when successors to the 737 and A320 families are being developed with new technology...

From FLUG REVUE 4/2004, page 28

Last updated 12 March 2004

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