Airlink looks to standardise configurations after rapid Embraer fleet growth

South African regional carrier Airlink will focus on standardising configurations within its Embraer regional jet fleet after a period of rapid growth since starting operations under its own brand three and a half years ago. Airlink has grown to a fleet of 66 Embraer aircraft, ranging from 37-seat EJR-135s and 44-seat ERJ-140s to a mix of larger Embraer 170, 190 and 195 jets. ”For the foreseeable future, certainly our next five-year time horizon, I can’t see us putting our name on a piece paper for new aircraft,” Airlink CE Rodger Foster tells FlightGlobal during a recent wide-ranging interview. On the one hand, he says the airline plans to operate its 27 ERJ-135/145s regional jets for as long as possible. “They are paid-up assets and they are very useful on the thinner routes in order to get to the frequencies [we need],” Foster explains. ”As far as the E-Jets are concerned, we need to rationalise the variants there. We will probably end up with only one standard type going into the future. It may take us a few years to get to that. At the moment we are operating a few Embraer 170s, a rather large fleet of Embraer 190s – not all in standard [98 seat] configuration – we’ve got a couple of variants which are in a different configuration. ”Part of our efforts over the next year or two is to get them into a standard configuration.”<br/>