News
Mandarin Airlines builds fleet with ATR72s
January 19th 2018
“A new year, a new fleet, a new hangar and a new Mandarin Airlines,” Mandarin Airlines chairman, Shih-chien Hsieh, said at the delivery ceremony of the airline’s first ATR72-600s. Read More » The event was attended by China Airlines chairman, Nuan-hsuan Ho, ATR CEO, Christian Scherer, and 300 invited guests.
Mandarin Airlines is a China Airlines Group (CAL Group) domestic and short-haul regional subsidiary. The carrier has nine ATR72-600s on order. The first three are on lease from Avation, while the remaining six turboprops are being sourced directly from ATR.
At the ceremony, CAL chairman Ho said ATR had dispatched training pilots and maintenance specialists to Taiwan to ease the new variant’s entry-into-service. Mandarin Airlines hopes to begin revenue flights with the ATRs before the Chinese Lunar New Year in mid-February, but requires clearance from Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration to begin the services.
The local regulator has become particularly fastidious about certifying turboprops, following several high-profile accidents in recent years.
To get its ATRs certified, Mandarin Airlines has been conducting a large number of proving flights between mainland Taiwan and its outlying Kinmen and Magong islands. The turboprop’s first revenue flight is scheduled to operate on the Kaohsiung-Magong route.
Mandarin Airlines is scheduled to take delivery of two more ATR72s this year, two more next year and another two the following year, for a complete fleet of nine by 2020. The carrier fits the Pratt & Whitney PW127-powered aircraft with 70 seats.
Following the induction of the ATRs, the Taipei-headquartered airline said its two B737-800s would be re-rostered to perform more international and cross-strait flights, while its six Embraer E190s would continue plying domestic routes. During the same event, CAL and Mandarin Airlines celebrated the commissioning of a 2,850m2 maintenance hangar at Songshan Airport – the Songshan Maintenance Hangar – which will be able to accommodate up to three turboprops concurrently, or a B737 and an ATR. The facility will have the capability to perform heavy maintenance, including C-checks, on the ATRs.
