The Embraer E190-E2 is approaching certification and entry into service later this year with Widerøe Airlines, and the program is on-time and under budget. While that is unusual enough these days, the aircraft is also beating its performance targets in flight testing, resulting to an adjustment to improve the initial specification, an even rarer event.
The E190-E2 has a fuel burn 1.3% better than originally expected, providing a 17.3% improvement over the current E190, thanks to the efficiency of the Pratt & Whitney PW1900G geared turbofan engines and optimized aerodynamics, including a new wing. The aircraft is also the quietest in its class, with a 20 EPNdB cumulative margin to Stage IV noise limits, also better than the original specifications. Since the EPNdB is a logarithmic scale, that means a 75% reduction in noise.
The flight test results also confirmed better “hot and high” performance from airports such as Denver and Mexico City and improvements for short runway performance such as London City.
Maintenance intervals for the E190-E2 will be the longest in the single aisle segment, with 10,000 flight hours for basic checks and no calendar limits in typical utilization. This adds about 1.5 days of additional service annually, providing a significant economic improvement.
Embraer enjoys a large installed base of EJet customers, with more than 1,400 EJets in service. Transition training to the E2 models for pilots will require only 2.5 days with no simulator training required. This provides additional savings for current EJet customers.
The Bottom Line:
Embraer has created an aircraft with class leading fuel efficiency and economics. With the first commercial flight for the E190-E2 scheduled for April 24th from Bergen to Tromsø, the E2-190 will be on-time, under-budget, and better than specifications, which reflects well on Embraer’s management. It is easy to see why Boeing wants to acquire Embraer.
