SAO JOSE DOS CAMPOS, Brazil, 14 August 2007 — Embraer, the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer, has come a long way from its humble beginnings in 1969. Founded as a state-owned company, Embraer’s first responsibilities was to manufacture training planes for the Brazilian Air Force and dabble in satellites and other space ventures. Today, Embraer considers itself the third largest airplane maker in the world, next to giants Boeing and Airbus.
Privatized in 1994, Embraer now employs 16,409 people worldwide and is the market leader of small passenger jets that seat from 70 to 120 passengers, with a firm order backlog of $9.9 billion.
Saudi Arabian Airlines is already operating 15 E-170 jets on its domestic routes, and Embraer is eager to sell more planes to Saudi Arabia and to other airlines in the Middle East.
“Embraer does not compete directly with Boeing and Airbus because our biggest aircraft are the size of their smallest aircraft,” explained Rodrigo Silva e Souza, product strategy manager at Embraer. “We have had much more success than Bombardier in the Middle East in selling planes of 60-110 seats. As far as I know they haven’t sold even one plane of this size in the region.”
Indeed, while Embraer used to focus on the manufacture of small, turbo-prop planes that were so popular in the US in the 1980s and 1990s for short, low-density regional flights, in the late 1990s it noticed a huge gap in the market for smaller jets that seated from 70 to 120 passengers. This is when the E-family of jets was conceived, which now ranges from the smallest, the E-170, which can seat up to 80 passengers, to the largest, the E-195, which can seat up to 122 passengers.
Using the latest fly-by-wire technology for the controls, to composite materials for the fuselage and wings, and a double-bubble design for the cabin, Embraer built this whole family of jets on a common platform of controls and cabin design so that both passengers and pilots could reap the advantages of having similar products.
“The flexibility that our jets give airlines to meet the demand of less seats on some routes is what attracted customers to our products,” said Horacio Aragones Forjaz, executive vice president for corporate communications at Embraer.
The Brazilian manufacturer claims that a commonality in cockpit features of around 70 percent between the various aircraft in the E-Jet family will considerably cut costs for airlines in terms of training of pilots if they operate different planes from this family.
Embraer also says that airlines already operating the E-Jets have been able to increase flights on low-density, domestic routes, while saving money by filling up more of the seats on each flight and freeing larger aircraft that they used to use on those routes for use on more profitable routes.
“There is an average of 20 percent savings in efficiency by using E-Jets instead of Boeing 737s or Airbus 319s on some routes,” said Luiz Sergio Chiessi, vice president of market intelligence at Embraer.
“Commonality helps airlines save money because training is the same for all E-Jets,” added Chiessi. “E-Jets offer parts commonality of 86 to 100 percent, and common spare parts provide 30 percent of potential benefits in terms of savings.”
Embraer has been so successful with this new line of jets that it can barely keep up with all of the orders coming in. JetBlue of the US, Flybe of Britain, Air Canada, Royal Jordanian, US Airways, United Express and Copa Airlines of Panama have been some of the major customers of these jets.
The Brazilian manufacturer is also launching two new products soon on the opposite end of the scales: A small business jet called the Phenom and an ultra-large, luxury private jet called the Lineage 1000. The Phenom will be available in two models, the 100 and the 300. Starting at $2.9 million a piece, Embraer has already received orders for more than 400 Phenom 100s and 300s, according to Forjaz.
The Lineage 1000 is clearly aimed at the Middle East market which has the super-rich clientele who can afford large private jets. With a huge cabin volume of 4,085 cubic feet, it will be three times the size of a regular business jet, and will be able to fly nonstop from Dubai to Hong Kong and from New York to Athens.
The inside of the Lineage 1000 will be done in expensive leather and wood, with the plane having five distinct zones, according to Antonini Puppin-Macedo, product strategy manager for executive jets.
“The Middle East private jet market is growing by 5.6 percent a year,” said Puppin-Macedo, “so we are definitely interested in targeting potential customers there.”
In fact, Forjaz admitted that Embraer already has several orders for the Lineage 1000 from Middle East sheikhs, but said that he could not reveal who they were.
With the list price for one of these planes starting at $41 million, Embraer said the first Lineage jets should be flying by 2008.
