Republic Airways buys 47 passenger jets from Brazil planemaker Embraer

AP/Fox News, 01/25/2013

Brazilian planemaker Embraer says it has signed a contract with Republic Airways Holdings Inc. for the sale of 47 E-175 passenger jets for an estimated US$2 billion.

Embraer says in a Thursday statement that the agreement includes options for an additional 47 aircraft, which would bring the total value of the deal to approximately US$4 billion.

The statement says deliveries of the 76-seat aircraft are expected to begin in mid-2013.

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Brazil’s Embraer confirms Pratt for regional planes’ engines

Rogerio Jelmayer – Fox Business/Dow Jones Newswires, 01/08/2013

Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer SA (ERJ, EMBR3.BR) has selected Pratt & Whitney’s new geared turbofan engine for its updated E-Jet line of regional planes, ahead of alternatives offered by General Electric Co. (GE) and Rolls Royce Group PLC, a senior company executive said on Tuesday.

The new engines will be used in a modernized version of the E-Jet family, with aircraft of between 70 and 120 seats, the first of which will be delivered in 2018, said Paulo Cesar Souza e Silva, head of commercial aviation at Embraer, in a telephone interview.

The win by Pratt displaces incumbent GE Aviation, which has delivered more than 2,000 engines on Embraer’s current family of regional jets.

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Brazil’s aviation expands

AFP, 8/20/2012

SAO PAULO, 20 August 2012: A major air show in Sao Paulo over the weekend turned the spotlight on the robust health of Brazil’s general aviation market, which is thriving despite the global economic slowdown.

General aviation, which makes up the majority of the world’s air traffic, refers to all flights other than military and scheduled airline passenger and cargo flights.

The category, made up mostly of small planes, covers corporate travel, private flying, flight training, air ambulance, police aviation, aerial firefighting, air charter, and bush flying.

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Overpriced Brazil to be profitable for Latam, Cueto says

Eduardo Thomson – Bloomberg, 08/17/2012

Latam Airlines Group SA (LAN), the world’s most valuable carrier created by Lan Airlines SA’s tie-up with Tam SA, said it can operate profitably in a market as “unbelievably expensive” as Brazil and meet savings goals.

Latam will use Lan’s expertise in managing networks to help contain costs in Brazil, Lan Chief Executive Officer Ignacio Cueto said. Tam, Brazil’s top airline by market share, lost 363 million reais ($214 million) in the past 12 months as Brazil’s economy grows at the slowest pace in three years.

“We know very well that the situation in Brazil is difficult and there’s a reason why aviation there in the last 20 years has had problems making money,” Cueto said yesterday in an interview from his Santiago office. “For their authorities it’s hard to understand how expensive they are. For example, fuel taxes are different in every state. If in Chile we have two people in charge of fuel, in Brazil you need 15.”

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Brazil “very likely” to choose French fighter

Brian Winter – Reuters, 02/13/2012

Brazil is “very likely” to choose France’s Rafale fighter jet to refurbish its air force, government sources say, a decision that would award one of the emerging-market world’s most coveted defense contracts to a jet whose future was in doubt only two weeks ago.

President Dilma Rousseff and her top advisers believe that Dassault Aviation’s bid to sell at least 36 Rafales offers the best terms among the three finalists, the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The other two bidders in the competition are U.S.-based Boeing with its F-18 Super Hornet and Sweden’s Saab with its Gripen.

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What really happened aboard Air France 447

Jeff Wise – Popular Mechanics, 12/06/2011

For more than two years, the disappearance of Air France Flight 447 over the mid-Atlantic in the early hours of June 1, 2009, remained one of aviation’s great mysteries. How could a technologically state-of-the art airliner simply vanish?

With the wreckage and flight-data recorders lost beneath 2 miles of ocean, experts were forced to speculate using the only data available: a cryptic set of communications beamed automatically from the aircraft to the airline’s maintenance center in France. As PM found in our cover story about the crash, published two years ago this month, the data implied that the plane had fallen afoul of a technical problem—the icing up of air-speed sensors—which in conjunction with severe weather led to a complex “error chain” that ended in a crash and the loss of 228 lives.

The matter might have rested there, were it not for the remarkable recovery of AF447′s black boxes this past April. Upon the analysis of their contents, the French accident investigation authority, the BEA, released a report in July that to a large extent verified the initial suppositions. An even fuller picture emerged with the publication of a book in French entitled Erreurs de Pilotage (volume 5), by pilot and aviation writer Jean-Pierre Otelli, which includes the full transcript of the pilots’ conversation.

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Delta buys minority stake in Brazilian airline

AP, 12/07/2011

Brazil’s second largest airline said Wednesday it had agreed to sell a minority stake in the company to Delta Air Lines.

GOL Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA said in a regulatory filing with the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday that Delta Air Lines will pay $100 million for a “strategic minority interest” of GOL’s preferred shares.

GOL said the investment will be in the form of American Depositary Shares.

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Brazil needs over 700 aircraft in 20 years: Airbus

David Pearson – MarketWatch, 11/16/2011

Brazil will require over 700 new passenger aircraft that have more than 100 seats each over the next 20 years through 2030 to replace ageing aircraft and to add capacity to handle fast-growing passenger traffic demand, European commercial aircraft builder Airbus said Wednesday.

Airbus estimates in a recently released market forecast that Brazil will need 701 aircraft consisting of 501 single-aisle, 174 twin-aisle and 26 very large aircraft like the double-decker Airbus A380, worth a total of $82 billion.

Brazil will become the fourth-largest domestic air-travel market in the world by 2030, with an average annual growth rate of 7.4%, according to Airbus’s estimates. It said Brazil’s international and domestic air travel more than doubled over the last 10 years, and that by 2010 Sao Paulo had become the biggest gateway city for international travel to Latin America.

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Brazilian president promises to boost investment with Bulgaria, her ancestral homeland

Mercopress, 10/06/2011

The Brazilian president received a hero’s welcome in Sofia.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff pledged to raise investment in Bulgaria, her ancestral homeland, in renewable energy, aviation and the oil industry.

Rousseff arrived to the capital Sofia late Tuesday after meeting European Union officials in Brussels, accompanied by representatives from Brazil’s biggest companies, including state-controlled oil company Petrobras and mining company Vale, both based in Rio de Janeiro.

Rousseff, whose late father Pedro Rousseff immigrated to Brazil after leaving Bulgaria before World War II, is on her first visit to the eastern European nation of 7.3 million, where her election last year was widely celebrated. Prime Minister Boiko Borissov gave her a family tree during her inauguration on Jan. 1.

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