Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with&nbsp;New Jersey Monthly&nbsp;magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for&nbsp;Aviation International News&nbsp;in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.

Senior Editor

Gregory Polek

A flurry of commercial announcements in the regional- and small-narrowbody aircraft sectors came across the wires last week, led by a firm order on Thursday for 10 Bombardier CSeries CS300s from Latvian carrier airBaltic. The deal, potentially worth $1.57 billion at list prices, included so-called purchase rights on 10 more of the airplanes and represented a conversion of a <a href="http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/2012-07-10/airbaltic-one-step-closer-cseries-order">letter of intent signed at this year’s Farnborough International</a> airshow.


News of the latest CSeries deal came only a day after Bombardier announced it had signed a letter of intent from an unidentified customer in the Americas covering 12 CS100s and options on another 18. That contract raised the number of customers for the CSeries to 14 and the type’s commitment count–including firm orders, LOIs and purchase rights–to 352.


Meanwhile, halfway around the world, ATR’s stellar sales performance this year continued with Tuesday’s memorandum of understanding from Malaysia Airlines calling for the purchase of 36 ATR 72-600s, 20 of which MAS plans to assign to its Firefly regional subsidiary and the remaining 16 to fellow regional MASWings starting near the end of next year’s second quarter.


Malaysia Airlines announced that deal on the same day ATR unveiled a firm order from Singaporean lease company Avation plc for seven of the 68-seat turboprops, raising the number of ATR 72-600s in the lessor’s portfolio to 27.


Finally, still another customer from Asia–Japan’s Fuji Dream–lent a boost to Embraer’s waning E-Jet backlog with a firm order for a pair of E175s. Now flying three E170s and three E175s, Fuji Dream has ordered the airplanes in a single-class, 84-seat cabin configuration.


All the order activity for the Western world’s three major regional aircraft manufacturers came in a week during which <a href="http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/2012-12-18/airbus-inks-another-big-neo-deal">Airbus landed a firm order for 58 A320neos</a> and 17 A321neos from Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines and Boeing logged firm orders covering 53 airplanes, including thirty 777s and 15 737s from unidentified customers, four 767 Freighters from FedEx, six 777s from China Airlines and a single 777 from the Iraqi government for Iraqi Airways. Boeing also reported order cancellations involving a 747, a 777 and a 787.

Bombardier, ATR, Embraer End Year with a Flourish

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