Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
ATR estimates airlines will buy 1,340 turboprop airliners with 90 seats during the next 20 years, which sounds like a good market. But it could be a cramped one. If all five of the aircraft proposed for the segment go ahead, each will average a production run of fewer than 300.
Eight years ago, Southeast Asian-based airlines had just 29 turboprop airliners in the 70-seat class. Since then the fleet has more than tripled to 106, with ongoing orders making the region one of the most important for the turboprop sector. More remarkably, this growth has happened, and is continuing, amid powerful expansion by budget airlines, the classic enemy of the turboprop operator.
