IPTN's N-250 plane takes part at Paris air show
IPTN's N-250 plane takes part at Paris air show
PARIS (Agencies): Few airplanes at the Paris Air Show have traveled as far as Indonesia's IPTN N-250 twin-turboprop passenger aircraft, and its makers contend that few can claim to be better value.
Indonesia is the only Asian country to have aircraft on the tarmac at the world's biggest aerospace bazaar, which opened Saturday at Le Bourget airport.
Besides the N-250, state-owned PT Industri Pesawat Terbang Nusantara (IPTN) has also flown all the way from Indonesia the CN-235 transport, built jointly with Spain's CASA group.
In the exhibition halls, IPTN has also erected a mock-up cabin and cockpit of its projected N-2130 twin-jet airliner -- a clone of the Boeing 737 that is expected to have its first flight in 2002.
Buyers can already find similar aircraft in the West, and more are in development in Asia, but IPTN thinks it can get a step up on its rivals with better pricing and new technology.
"It depends on the components (ordered for each aircraft), but roughly you can say that our competitiveness lies with the price and the fly-by-wire systems," IPTN spokesman M. Tjahjono Satoto told AFP.
Indonesia's Science and Technology Minister B.J. Habibie, who is also IPTN's president, is to meet the press here today.
Habibie was quoted by Indonesia's Antara news agency as saying at a seminar here yesterday that IPTN planned to manufacture engines for its own aircraft to reduce its dependence on foreign suppliers.
"This step proves that Indonesia is consistent with its commitment to developing the aircraft industry," he pointed out but he did not give further details.
Habibie called on French businessmen to cooperate with IPTN in producing aircraft engines.
Accompanying Habibie in the air show will be Indonesian Air Force Chief Marshall Sutria Tubagus, who will be a much-courted figure among fighter-jet manufacturers after Jakarta on June 6 canceled plans to buy nine F-16s from the United States.
It did so in anger over U.S. criticism of Indonesia's human rights record, notably in the former Portuguese colony of East Timor.
The commander in chief of Indonesia's armed forces, General Feisal Tanjung, is due to visit the air show on Wednesday.
France's Mirage-2000, the British Hawk 200 and Russia's Sukhoi Su-27 have all been mooted by sources in Jakarta as potential buys.
Built to take on the likes of Sweden's Saab 2000 or Canada's De Havilland Dash 8, the 70-seat N-250 airliner -- powered by U.S-made Allison 2100 engines -- is expected to sell for US$14.4 million to $16 million, Satoto said.
That compares to around $18 million for the Dash 8, a product of the Bombardier group, he said.
Firm orders have already been placed by Garuda Indonesia and three other Indonesian carriers, and Satoto said: "For the N-250, we are confident that the market is domestic."
For the N-2130, however, "it's roughly 50-50" between Indonesian and foreign orders, he added.
No price for the twin-jet N-2130 has been set yet, as it is still in the development stages, but Satoto said it would certainly be less than the $30 million or so that a Boeing 737 now costs off the production line.
The project is so fresh that no engine has yet been selected, he said.
But like the N-250, the jet will use fly-by-wire technology, whereby the ailerons, flaps, rudder and tail are controlled by electronic impulses, rather than pulleys and cables.
Indonesia forecasts a market for 390 aircraft of the N-250's type (100 to 130 passengers) by 2015, or -- calculated in another fashion -- 550 in 2005 through 2525.
Promising as that might be, the numbers are dwarfed by the 995 that are expected to be sold in Canada and the United States by 2015, or 1,101 in the 2005-2525 period, according to IPTN's estimates.
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