One day after Crossair announced a multi-billion dollar deal with Brazilian jet manufacturer EMBRAER, Switzerland’s second largest carrier confirmed that the first new passenger jet would take off early next year.

One day after Crossair announced a multi-billion dollar deal with Brazilian jet manufacturer EMBRAER, Switzerland’s second largest carrier confirmed that the first new passenger jet would take off early next year, as part of the company’s biggest strategic reorientation in years.

“The ERJ-145 (shown above) is expected to take off in February 2000 and will be used for longer regional flights,” said company spokesman Manfred Winkler.

He said the destinations serviced by the 49-seat ERJ-145 were not decided yet, but he added that the company was likely to expand its flight routes in the next few years anyway.

Crossair started out in 1979 as a regional taxi service with three small aircraft, flying mostly to neighbouring Germany and Austria. Today, the Basel-based company has 81 aircraft and describes itself as one of the leading regional air carriers in Europe in terms of number of flights per day.

Crossair announced at the Paris Air Show it was buying 75 regional EMBRAER passenger jets and had placed options for an additional 125 planes in a deal worth up to $4.9 billion.

Crossair has placed firm orders for 30 of Embraer's new 70-seat ERJ-170 aircraft and 30 of its new 108-seat ERJ-190-200s. It also is buying 15 smaller ERJ-145s, company executives said.

The airline's firm orders are valued at $2 billion, while the optional orders total $2.9 billion. Delivery is to begin as early as February for the ERJ-190-200s and two years later for the bigger planes.

The deciding factor was the Brazilian company's ability to provide the full range of aircraft sizes that Crossair needed. Fairchild-Dornier could not to supply the smallest planes, Crossair chief executive Moritz Suter said.

Crossair said the modernisation was made necessary since Saab of Sweden – a key supplier of aircraft for Crossair -- had stopped building passenger jets.

Embraer is Brazil's second-largest individual exporter, with sales last year of $1.3 billion.

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