Designing a brand new turboprop to handle higher passenger numbers is appearing more attractive to European airframer ATR than a stretch of its current ATR 72 to tackle the 90-seat sector.

“I would say we haven’t ruled out any options but it’s probably less likely we’d do a stretch of the existing [aircraft] and more likely that we’d look at the next generation of technology available on engines and other systems - that goes well beyond what’s available in the market,” says ATR head of sales John Moore.

He notes, however, that ATR “really needs to look at the market more and understand what the requirement is before we move ahead with anything”.

During the recent Dubai air show, ATR chief executive Stephane Meyer confirmed that with Bombardier examining a “Q400X” stretch of the 78-seat Q400, ATR is also “thinking about” a larger ATR.

“I would say that we’re certainly looki

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