Agreement Announced Nearly A Year Ago, Deliveries Begin In July

The contract for the sale of 20 Embraer 190 jets to Austral Lineas Aereas of Argentina has been put to bed. The agreement was announced in May 2009, and was conditioned on fulfilling several requirements, which were finalized last week. From the 20 jets on order, three were already included in the firm order backlog of the first quarter of 2010, as "Undisclosed".

Austral will use the aircraft mainly to substitute older jets on domestic routes, to increase current flight frequencies, and to serve new cities. The modern and comfortable E-Jets will allow the airline to fly any route within Argentina's territory, nonstop.

The Embraer 190 is one of four models of the Embraer 170/190 E-Jets family and entered operation in 2005. The broad customer base is comprised of 56 companies in 39 countries. With over 620 units in operation, these aircraft have transported 200 million passengers worldwide.

The Embraer 190 jets ordered by the Argentine airline are of the Advanced Range (AR) model, and can fly nonstop for 2,400 nautical miles. The passenger cabin configuration will have a total of 96 seats divided into two classes with four seats per row ... eight in the executive and 88 in the economy. All passengers will have a modern inflight entertainment system with individual monitors.

FMI: www.embraer.com