Special Report: ATR is making a run at its loneliest market

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Many were caught by surprise when JSX decided in June to add a pair of ATR 42-600 turboprops to its fleet of repurposed — albeit aging — regional jets. But the arrival of the turboprops to the comfortable yet controversial scheduled charter operator is part of a larger strategy by the Airbus-Leonardo joint venture to reintroduce the category back into the planet’s most inhospitable passenger turboprop market: the United States of America.

The U.S. is still the world’s largest regional aviation market, yet today remains the loneliest for ATR. While the company has seen success with freighters, its U.S. passenger fleet consists of just a single active aircraft: a nearly 28-year-old ATR 42-500 flying with Intracoastal Aviation that hops infrequently across Florida, according to ch-aviation and Flightradar24. Put another way, there are more Chinese-manufactured Comac regional aircraft in Indonesia today than ATR passenger aircraft in the United States.

Related: The U.S. has a 50-seat jet problem

Selling regional aircraft in the U.S. is the transactional equivalent of a Rube Goldberg machine. In-production Western regional aircraft manufacturers — of which only two remain — have to navigate pilot labor agreements, a fragmented pool of independent operators, varied business models, rising operating costs, a structural shortage of pilots and a shrinking market for their products. The complex process of selling regional aircraft into the U.S. makes selling Boeing and Airbus single-aisle jetliners look like a breeze.

But ATR is ready to take a fresh approach to the market. This week, the company is expected to roll out its U.S. strategy ahead of the Regional Airlines Association’s Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C. The Air Current was given an exclusive first look at ATR’s strategy earlier this year in Toulouse, parts of which have already started to come to life.

While each transaction seems more complex than the last, ATR told TAC it envisions making the strategic dominos fall one by one, starting with JSX. “We need the first entrant opportunity to be able to then take the next step of getting the network carriers engaged,” said Chris Jones, vice president of the Americas for ATR.

“Which is: ‘I see there’s people traveling on turboprops again.’ So it becomes a competitive threat…because it’s drawing a population of traffic towards the turboprop. And [then] how do we address that 50-seat void that is only growing year over year? There’s kind of different levers that I think we can influence, but it doesn’t happen overnight.”

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