Quietly but surely, the noisy, bumpy, fuel-efficient turboprops are making a comeback as fuel costs climb to record highs and airlines struggle to stay afloat.
With the price of oil reaching $120 a barrel, aviation fuel cost, which now becomes a third of an airline's operating cost, is one expenditure that no airline can ignore.
Until recently, greater passenger comfort was the main focus for many commuter airlines. Turboprops, with loud propeller noise and vibrating passenger cabins, gave way to the quieter faster regional jets. Turboprop market shrank and turboprop manufacturers, Fokker and Saab, had either declared bankruptcy or abandoned production of turboprops altogether.
When propeller driven planes can make short trips with a quarter to a third less fuel than regional jets, airlines that only a short time ago were retiring their turboprop fleets in favor of all-jet fleets are now giving a second thought to the fuel-efficient turboprops.
As a result, there has been a clear reversal of trends in the regional airline business. Aircraft manufacturers Canada’s Bombardier and France’s ATR have increased production to 140 planes in 2008, after making 100 deliveries in 2007. This compares with only 26 deliveries in 2002. In the commuter airliner market, turboprops are outselling equivalent regional jets by a factor of two to one.
With increasing market interest, Bombardier is considering to offer a larger 90-seat Q400, and ATR is contemplating designing a new aircraft model. These new planes, which can fly at higher cruising altitudes, would have advanced noise/vibration suppression systems and offer in-flight comfort levels comparable to regional jets.
So, the turboprops are here to stay for good reasons: high aviation fuel cost and optimized operation efficiency.
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Now that the prices of fuel are quite high and likely to remain that way, we also need to consider the fuel waste involved with LTOL (long take off and landing) aircraft versus VTOL (vertical take off and landing) airplanes.
Propellers are indeed more efficient than straight jet engines. And used to vertically lift an airplane directly from the ground and then propel it horizontally at high speed as a fixed wing airplane would allow for one very efficient aircraft.
LTOL craft with propellers are relatively efficient when flying, but waste fuel taxiing on the runway and they are limited to places where they can take off and land, namely airports.
The most efficient aircraft is one that can take passengers directly from where they are to where they truly want to go. Any other scenario wastes time and fuel. That is why at Aeromobile Inc. we have been working on an airplane that can take off and land vertically. It utilizes dual rotating propellers for even more efficiency and it has a unique arc wing that creates more lift and hence adds even more efficiency.
I talk more about this airplane on my blog: http://drbertelsen.blogspot.com/search/label/VTOL
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