ATR: Why Propellers Still Rule Regional Routes

If you’ve flown to a Greek island, across the Caribbean or between small cities in Asia, you may well have boarded an aircraft with two big propellers and a high wing. There’s a strong chance it was an ATR. The company builds just two aircraft families, the ATR 42 and ATR 72, and has quietly become the world’s leading maker of regional turboprops.

A Franco-Italian partnership

ATR was founded in 1981 as a joint venture between France’s Aérospatiale and Italy’s Aeritalia, headquartered in Toulouse. Both companies had been studying regional aircraft separately, and pooling their work made sense. The partners’ successors, Airbus and Italy’s Leonardo, each own 50% today. The name stands for Avions de Transport Régional, regional transport aircraft.

The work is split along national lines, a lot like Airbus itself: fuselage sections are built by Leonardo in Italy and flown to Toulouse for final assembly.

Why propellers, in a jet age?

It can seem old-fashioned to build propeller aircraft when jets are faster. But ATR’s aircraft use turboprop engines: jet-turbine engines that drive a propeller. On short routes they’re hard to beat:

• Lower fuel burn. On short flights a turboprop uses noticeably less fuel per seat than a regional jet.
• Short runways. They can operate from smaller airports that jets can’t use, including many island airfields.
• Lower costs. They’re cheaper to buy and to run, which keeps thin routes profitable.
• Speed hardly matters. On a 300km flight, a jet’s higher cruise speed saves only a few minutes.

The high wing helps too, keeping the engines and propellers clear of debris on rough runways and giving passengers an unobstructed view down.

A family that keeps evolving

The ATR 42 first flew in 1984, followed by the stretched ATR 72 in 1988. Rather than design brand-new aircraft, ATR has kept improving the same basic design with new engines, glass cockpits, modern cabins and special versions such as the ATR 42 for very short runways and a dedicated ATR 72 freighter for parcel networks. That steady approach has made the family the best-selling regional aircraft with under 90 seats.

Its main rival over the years has been the De Havilland Canada Dash 8, especially the larger and faster Q400. Learn more about the 72 in our ATR 72-600 profile.

Sources & Further Reading

• ATR (aircraft manufacturer) — Wikipedia ↗
• ATR turns 40 — Leonardo ↗
• ATR 72 — Wikipedia ↗