Case on Leading Commercial Aircraft in the Brazilian Domestic Aviation Market

The Brazilian aviation market is the largest in Latin America, approximately $10 billion in revenues in 2018. Thus, the global leading commercial aircraft manufacturers compete vigorously for a larger share of the market. This article compared the performance of the leading airplanes in the domestic aviation market in Brazil, operated by the three major Brazilian airlines, through descriptive case study and market analysis on extensive archival research. Key findings pointed out the leaders within three categories: (i) more jumbo jets Airbus A320, and Boeing 737-800; (ii) c-series jets Embraer ERJ 195, and (iii) turbofan ATR-72 600, among the N=499 airplanes investigated within the three major airlines in Brazil, once the fourth competitor, Avianca Brasil, was suspended of all flights and operations by ANAC in April 2019, as a precautionary measure concerned with the safety of the operations, due to the company's filing bankruptcy. This work is useful to civil aviation managers, agents, decision-makers, students, academics, and overall practitioners. Discussion and future research compile the present article.


Introduction and literature review
This study investigated the Brazilian domestic aviation market, and compared leading aircraft operating in the country, as the unit of analysis (Yin, 1988). It aims to call into question the operation of the (i) larger jets 1 ; (ii) c-series jets 2 , and (iii) the leading turbofans still operating in regional, short-haul flights, in the most significant Brazilian airlines, as well as their current performance.
The big four leading commercial aircraft manufacturers operating in Brazil are (i) the Brazilian EMBRAER; (ii) the North American Boeing; (iii) the French-Italian company Aviation de Transport Regional (ATR), and (iv) the European Airbus.
Moreover, the big four airlines in Brazil are: (i) GOL Linhas Aéreas; (ii) LATAM Airlines Group; (iii) Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras SA, and (iv) Avianca Brasil, and respective market shares, as illustrated in the following Figure 1: Observe in Figure 1 that GOL is the leading aviation company (35.7 percent), followed by LATAM (31.9 percent), Azul, and Avianca. However, Avianca Brasil, officially Oceanair Linhas Aéreas, subsidiary of the Colombian Avianca Holdings, due to filing bankruptcy, had their flight operations suspended sine die by the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) on May 24, 2019, as a precautious measure, primarily destined to secure with the passengers' safety (ANAC, 2020).Therefore, for 2020, the slice of Avianca's pie should be redistributed among the three major players in the Brazilian civil aviation market.
The results here investigated were achieved through qualitative, multiple-methods approach, such as descriptive case study combined with direct participation (once the authors are frequent fliers in all companies), and extensive archival research.
The primary motivation relies upon recent body of works in the civil aviation field of research: (i) air passenger transportation in Brazil (Dias,

Methodology of research
The present study combined qualitative, inductive reasoning and interpretive, multi-methods approach, such as single, descriptive case study (Yin, 1988), extensive archival research, and direct participation. The case unit of analysis is the Brazilian most significant commercial aircraft operating in the Brazilian civil aviation domestic market.
This case is limited to the Brazilian domestic aviation market, designed for regional flights. The international flight market, as well as respective manufacturers, regarding long-haul flights. In this article, we admitted long-haul flights as being more significant than 4,800 km, and short-haul flights as being less than 1,100 km.
This case is limited to the Brazilian domestic aviation market, designed for regional flights. The international flight market, as well as respective manufacturers, regarding long-haul flights 3 , is not considered here. Neither military aviation is not the scope of the present research, nor other modals of civil transportation.
Despite Avianca Brasil has been the fourth biggest airline in Brazil until May 2019, we opted for letting Avianca out of the scope of this research, because it not no longer operates in the Brazilian market, and the three major airlines have absorbed Avianca's share. This article is limited to passenger transportation. Cargo air freight transportation was not investigated here.
We investigated and compared the most significant airplanes operating in Brazil in regional, shorthaul flights, from the global aircraft manufacturers: (i) Airbus, A319, A320, A320 Neo, and A321; (ii) Boeing 737-700, and 737-800, once Boeing 737 MAX was grounded by the global aviation authorities due to failure project that culminated with two fatal air crashes (Cruz & Dias, 2020); (iii) Embraer ERJ 190, and ERJ 195; (iv) ATR 72-600. Other aircraft are not part of this study.
Other airport activities are not investigated in this research, such as (i) parking lot administration; (ii) shopping centers; (iii) food courts; (iv) cargo operations, (v) car rental, (vi) shuttle transportation, among others.
Finally, this article is limited to the Ministry of Transport, Ports and Civil Aviation, represented by the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC), limited to Federal Law 11.182, from September 27, 2005 (Brasil 2005), and to the international Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) and the International Air Transport Association's (IATA) international regulations (IATA, 2019). In the next section, the results of the Brazilian domestic air transportation market are presented.

Domestic air market in Brazil
Currently, near 93.6 million passengers were transported in 2018 4 in 815,862 regional flights, according to the ANAC, as highlighted in the following Figure 2:

Leading aircraft manufacturers operating domestic flights in Brazil
To date, in total, 22 219 aircraft are registered in the Brazilian Aeronautical Registry (RAB). Out of these, 640 are registered for air passenger transportation, including domestic and international flights (3 percent), from which 499 are investigated, as illustrated in Table 1, as follows: Source: ANAC, 2020 Observe in Table 1 that Airbus, Boeing, Embraer (the only Brazilian aircraft manufacturer and global leader of jets up to 100 seats), and ATR are the leading airplane manufacturers operating in Brazil, according to the ANAC (2020). The Dutch Fokker, however, does not operate in Brazil since 1996, due to bankruptcy. The last seven Fokkers were terminated in 2015. Note that Airbus is the leading aircraft manufacturer operating in Brazil, with 193 airplanes, mostly 737-800s.

Leading airplanes operating domestic flights in Brazil, per airline
Observe in Table 2, the three leading airlines in Brazil and their respective airplanes: Note in Table 2 that GOL operates in the domestic market with Boeing 737s, especially the 737-800, with 91 airplanes. Observe that LATAM, on the other hand, operates exclusively with Airbus, currently 136 Airbus A320-200. Azul operates with both Embraer ERJ 195, with 47 aircraft (the only Brazilian airline operating with airplanes made in Brazil), ATR 72-600 (33 units acquired from Trip Linhas Aéreas), and 39 Airbus A320 Neo. In the next section, we compare most of the airplanes aforementioned, leaders in each airline.
Observe in Table 3 the differences between the most frequently used aircraft in the Brazilian domestic market. Out of these airplanes, ATR 72-600 is the shortest airplane, suitable for short flights, with proportional capacity for passenger transportation (70 seats). On the other hand, Airbus A321-200 is the longest aircraft investigated (44,51 m length), also the highest flight autonomy, and the most expensive of the group ($116 million each). In the next section, analysis and case discussion is presented. Sources: Boeing (2020); Airbus (2020); ATR (2020); Embraer (2020)

Discussions and Conclusions
The Brazilian Air Market presented, in 2018, a slight recovery from the downturn since 2012. In 2018, 967 thousand scheduled and non-scheduled flights were carried out, from these, 815 domestic flights. The number of passengers transported reached 93.6 million domestic passengers. The total revenues in the period were $ 10 billion, approximately, the largest air transport market in Latin America.
Nevertheless, the global manufacturers evidenced optimism due to the increasing number of orders, with one exception: Boeing 737-MAX 8 orders were canceled after two flights crashed late 2018 and since Boeing the end of the Boeing 737-MAX series (four in total) production. In Brazil, GOL was the only airline affected, once had acquired seven 737 MAX-8, currently grounded at Minas Gerais, Confins Airport (Cruz & Dias, 2020).
Embraer, for instance, who traditionally manufactured airplanes up to 100 seats, launched the second generation of jets, E2 (E175-E2, E190-E2, and E195-E2), more substantial, faster planes to compete against Airbus A200 series. The Embraer jet E2 195, for instance (might in the future substitute current E195), has a passenger capacity of 144 seats, against the current 118 seats, 41.5 m long (against the current 38.5 m), reaching 4,600 km (against current 4,077 km), with a cost of $65.6 million, quite less expensive than Airbus A320, which costs $99 million (Table 3).
After the ups and downs in the Boeing's failed acquisition attempt on Embraer (Dias & Teles, 2018, 2019), both announced a joint venture to design, build, and sell commercial aircraft in the global market. The joint venture was established in February 2019, and the new company is called Boeing Brazil (80 percent Boeing's, and 20 percent of Embraer's shares). The partnership may implicate for the next ten years increasing participation in the domestic air flight market, further heating up the fierce competition between the largest aircraft manufacturers in the world.
Finally, this article condensed sparse data in a single, unpublished work. This study might implicate and be useful in other fields of research, such as (i) budgetary control (Al kaabi et al., 2020); (ii) international airport administration , (iii) other transportation modals, such as rail transportation (Dias & Albergarias, 2019), among others.

Recommendations
Future research is encouraged on the impact of the joint venture Boeing-Embraer (Boeing Brazil) in the air transportation market in Brazil for the next decade. Also encouraged is the research on the impact of the Corona-virus pandemic (COVID- 19), which implicates in airports closed, flights canceled all over the world, entirely unknown, and barely estimated, this far. It might provoke a significant downturn in the global aircraft manufacturers' revenues, once the whole sector is affected. Studies are also encouraged on the new jet family Embraer E2 on the civil aviation market in the next few years.