Aviation International News senior correspondent Ian Goold has been involved in aerospace since 1964 and in aviation media for more than 40 years. He enjoyed a 20-year career at Flight International magazine, where he was latterly air-transport editor before turning freelance in 1993. A winner of the European Regions Airline Association Hank McGonagle award for excellence in aerospace journalism and a Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year global&nbsp;award, he has edited or contributed to aerospace and aviation magazines, special publications, and websites in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Ian entered aerospace as an apprentice at the British Aircraft Corporation at Brooklands (Weybridge), where he worked on production and final assembly lines of the Vickers Super VC10, and BAC One-Eleven , and manufacture of Concorde major sub-assemblies. He subsequently graduated from the BAC Design Training School to work in the airframe structures drawing office (including design of international future projects, such as the Panavia Tornado multi-role combat aircraft) before joining Flight International in 1973. Apart from years of reading aircraft magazines and books, his first direct contact with aviation media had come during the early 1970s when he was involved at Brooklands with the Weybridge Man-powered Aircraft Group, which designed and built the tenth aircraft to fly under purely human power. As an aviation journalist, he has worked at more than&nbsp; 50 of the major biennial&nbsp;global and regional international aerospace industry shows at Le Bourget, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai (having missed attending only one "Farnborough" since 1960), plus innumerable NBAA, HAI, (U.S.) AOPA, and EBACE Conventions and ERA Assemblies. His favourite aircraft is the Hawker Hunter, of which – as a schoolboy – he heard hundreds make their first flights from Dunsfold, where also on September 24, 2013, he saw the penultimate landing of the VC10 (happily involving an example of which he had witnessed the maiden takeoff in 1970) a day before the last example made the design's final flight (unless, of course....).

Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

Seven years after BAE Systems canceled the ill-fated Avro RJX program, closing the hangar door on indigenous UK airliner production, the company’s regional aircraft division believes its BAe 146 and Avro RJ offerings remain competitive. Nevertheless, officials acknowledge that the market for the company’s used regional airliner fleet has become “very difficult,” as operators grapple with the joint effect of high fuel prices and restricted credit availability. 
“The last few weeks have been really quiet,” BAE Systems Regional Aircraft market analysis director Rob Morris told AIN early last month. “In April, airlines did not know what the impact of fuel and credit costs would be, and they’re still working with the fuel they bought three months ago.” 
Morris declined to forecast the short-term market. “Demand is reflected in inquiries about aircraft availability, [which have] gone down a lot,” he said. That means “a certain number” of aircraft have been parked, while BAE seeks to place available aircraft and any returning from lease. He acknowledged the challenge inherent in placing the BAe 146 or its enhanced Avro RJ variant, despite lower operating costs that offset the higher fuel burn of four engines. 
BAE continues to fight the “two engines good, four engines bad, new aircraft good, ‘old’ aircraft bad” market perception. “The reality is that placement is getting tougher,” especially in Europe, said Morris, where airframe age and the influence of low-cost carriers remain strong market factors. As a result, the company is looking toward markets that show less sensitivity to aircraft age, such as Africa and Latin America.
Thankfully for BAE, the 146/Avro RJ continues to offer operators “premium yield” on services to business airports such as London City (LCY), where passengers from London’s principal financial district six miles away will pay for time saved. Morris said this “niche application must be exploited.” In fact, he said that Air France has chosen to replace BAe 146-200s at LCY with Avro RJ85s rather than the Airbus A318. 
In Sweden, Malmo Aviation, whose nine-strong RJ100 fleet serves Stockholm’s Bromma city airport, has extended its leases “well into the second half of the next decade.” Fellow Braathens Aviation partner Transwede Airways flies RJ70s and RJ85s into LCY under third-party wet-lease contracts. 
Operating Cost Analysis Morris has compared basic operating economics for the 99-seat Avro RJ85 with those of the 96-seat Embraer E190 to see how the older airplane stacks up against newer models. “Our analysis suggests the RJ85 burns 660 U.S. gallons per hour, while JetBlue’s chief executive [has] reported that the E190 burns 570 U.S. gallons per hour,” said Morris. “The Embraer [uses] around 15 percent less fuel, but IBA’s most recent Lease Rate Digest indicates that [a leased] E190 will cost around $235,000 per month, compared with around $90,000 per month for an RJ85. Running these details through our direct operating cost model at $3.67 per U.S. gallon suggests the E190’s DOC is around 10 percent higher than [that of] the RJ85.
“At typical airline utilization of 2,000 hours per year, the monthly savings delivered by the RJ85 exceed $65,000,” said Morris. “While fuel and other benefits of the E190 total around $97,000 per month, the ownership cost benefits of the RJ85 exceed $164,000 per month, [an] overall benefit of nearly $67,000 per month.” Morris even argued that operation of a similarly sized BAe 146-200, at $56,000 per month lease rates, offers an advantage over new aircraft.
Finally, he offered a further consideration for operators. “The economic benefit from [lower] ownership cost is a certainty,” said Morris. “A lease for typically five or more years, or purchase of the aircraft [financed] over a longer term [commits the customer] to rental/finance every month and capital outlay is fixed. Any economic benefit from fuel burn is less certain [because of fluctuating prices], so any long-term fleet plan built on [such] benefit carries an element of economic uncertainty.”

ERA 2008: BAE makes case for economics of its quiet quad-jets

Seven years after BAE Systems canceled the ill-fated Avro RJX program, closing the hangar door on indigenous UK airliner production, the company’s regional

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