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Embraer 170/190 Maintenance and Ruggedness is Class-Leading
Luis Carlos Affonso, who oversaw the Embraer 170/190 airliners’ introduction to the market, claims that his airplanes are dramatically pushing down operators’ maintenance costs to around one man-hour per hour flown.
“This is un-unbeatable,” he claims. “No other airliner can match our A- and C-checks of 600 flight hours/600 flight cycles and 6,000 flight hours/5,000 flight cycles respectively,” said Affonso. “These numbers are quite remarkable for a brand-new airplane. Our E170/190 basic check is at 6,000-hour intervals, which is 50% better than the Bombardier CRJ700/900, 44% better than the A318/319 and 80% better than Boeing’s 737NG. Even over a 10-year period, downtime projection is 38 days for the 170/190, 55 days for the CRJ700/900, 60 days for the B737NG and 85 days for the Airbus A318/A319.”
Affonso claims that his new airliners have been tested and are ready for their baptism of fire in the low-cost carrier market, where aircraft fly more hours per day than ‘legacy’ airlines, and with much shorter turnarounds.
Given 100% load factors in single class at 32-inch seat pitch, the Brazilian airframer says that the Embraer 170 can be turned-around in 14.3 minutes, the 175 in 15.3 minutes, the 190 in 17.8 minutes and the largest model in the family, the 195, in 19 minutes. U.S. low-cost carrier jetBlue, which is soon to start Embraer 190 operations, was “very interested in these figures,” said Affonso.
Sixty Embraer 170s are currently in scheduled service with five airlines: six with Alitalia, one with Cirrus of Germany, 18 with Republic, 25 with US Airways and 10 with LOT Polish Airlines. —Mike Vines
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