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BERLIN—Deutsche Aircraft is planning to offer its own design of landing gear for both the forthcoming Dornier 328eco and legacy D328 turboprops, as a reaction to continuing equipment supply chain problems.
Existing 328 turboprops have an undercarriage produced by Safran. However, long delays in accessing replacement landing gear from the French manufacturer have spurred Deutsche Aircraft into developing its own version.
Deutsche Aircraft will hold the intellectual property, but will devolve the manufacturing to a German supplier, CCO Anastasija Visnakova told Aviation Week on the sidelines of the Berlin Aviation Summit June 9.
She said that airlines have had to retire some legacy 328s that retained significant remaining life because of problems in sourcing replacement landing gear.
The new kit will initially be made available for retrofitting to legacy 328 turboprops (the turbofan-powered 328JET is not included).
Deutsche Aircraft currently holds 134 letters of intent for the 40-seat 328eco. Around 70% are airliner replacements for existing types and approximately 10% to 15% are for the recently announced 328MR variant offered for government, para-government or military users. A new category is the “fly in, fly out” market, where companies—typically in the mining sector—rotate work crews to and from remote sites. The latter service has been a part of the aviation scene in Australia for many years and is now growing in Canada.
The company already has “a pretty big footprint in the [multi-role] segment,” with legacy 328s used for a variety of roles including medevac and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Many of these activities are undertaken in conjunction with EASP AIR, a Netherlands-UK company that provides services such as coastguard support, search and rescue and maritime surveillance to European governments.
The letters of intent are widely spread globally. The greatest number of customers come from Europe and Africa, but the largest number of aircraft will be destined for North America, if the letters are firmed up.
Demand is “typically for replacement aircraft,” Visnakova said—sometimes for elderly turboprops such as the Saab 340 but also for aging jets such as Embraer 135/145s. Examples of the Brazilian regional jet are particularly numerous in North America.
Deutsche Aircraft is specifically looking at Part 135 operators—airlines that have aircraft with a maximum of 30 seats and use fixed-base operators rather than conventional airport terminals, giving passengers a much faster transit through airports.
With limited financial resources available to many small airlines, Deutsche is actively talking to lessors—for both airliner and multi-role versions—as well as to export credit organizations in Germany and Canada (the source of the aircraft’s Pratt & Whitney PW127XT-S engines) as potential purchasers of the new-build aircraft.
Deutsche Aircraft is also in the early stages of looking at leasing out aircraft directly, “because we understand that regional operators require financial support.”
The MR version is being looked at as a mothership for several drones, undertaking searches of wider areas—either at sea or on border patrols, for example—than would be possible by a single aircraft.
Deutsche Aircraft has access to U.S.-based parent company Sierra Nevada Corporation’s intellectual property for drones. Sierra Nevada, however, is unlikely to provide one of its existing uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) models as a companion to the 328MR. Whichever UAV is eventually chosen, it should be built in Europe, Visnakova said.
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