Hi there!
I may need your advice regarding my fleet. I’m currently operating multiple Fokker 50’s on domestic routes. Most flights are fully booked and I’d like to expand further. However, I’m not sure about my choice of aircraft. While the Fokker is seriously cheap to lease and profitability is decent on most flights, I wonder whether I would be better of with the Dash 8 / ATR in the long run.
So, short-term expansion vs long term profitability? Fokker vs Dash? What should I choose. Keep also in mind that I already use three maintenance categories (S100 and LET), so maintenance would be higher on the new aircrafts (even though i would obviously like to replace the Fokker in the long-term).
Thanks for any advice!
Could you please answer these questions and I will help you.
Name of airline
Server
Planned destinations
Country
How you want to have it
Competition
As a totally pure gues I would say go for the Fokkers at the moment and then depends totally of the range you want to operate. If you do not want to fly so long and want totally new fleet also if you want to fly cargo use the ATR, if you want range and older planes as only the big one is in production and you will need the small, then go for Dash 8. If you say the name of your airline and the server I can help you more and say what I would recomend whitout just guessing.
Q400 is very popular but ATR72 is not that bad either. Actually it is only very slightly less economical than Q400, and is also slightly slower, but it has a cargo option and also smaller ATR42 for fleet commonality. I would suggest to do a quick replacement when you start replacing, the newer your aircraft the smaller your maintenance cost will be, so with a young fleet you can even have 4 or 5 categories and the maintenance cost surcharge for additional category may be negligible.