Aircraft manufacturer ATR has announced that it is suspending development of the ATR42-600S short take-off and landing (STOL) aircraft, according to the ch-aviation portal.
The decision was made after a review of the market and current issues in the supply chain. Namely, it turned out that the demand for the aircraft with the above characteristics would be lower than initially predicted. The ATR42-600S was supposed to reduce the distance required for safe take-off and landing to just 800 meters, while at the same time providing a significantly higher passenger capacity than other aircraft that can take off and land on short runways. Several primarily targeted airports have extended their runways and no longer require STOL aircraft. ATR therefore decided to focus on improvements to the existing widely used ATR42-600 and ATR72-600 types to reduce the costs of flight operations and increase the market availability of the mentioned types of aircraft.
The portal ch-aviation also states that ATR received about twenty orders for the specified type of aircraft before the decision was made to stop the development of the ATR42-600S.
