The world’s third-largest planemaker, Brazil’s Embraer, has announced that in the second quarter of 2020, revenue from its commercial aircraft sector has fallen 82% to US$109 million compared to last year. The company also reported a loss of US$315 million for the last quarter. The drop in revenue has been blamed on the worldwide fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic which is having a devastating effect on air travel and, bar cargo, the commercial aviation sector as a whole.
The announcement comes just three months after Boeing pulled the plug on it’s US$4.2 billion plan to acquire the commercial aviation arm of Embraer, the most profitable part of its business. Boeing cited the Brazilian company’s failure to meet certain unnamed conditions as the reason for terminating the deal with no advance notice, although the world was, by then, already gripped by the pandemic and global aviation had shrunk to over 90% of its usual capacity.
Embraer is encountering the same problems as both Boeing and Airbus with regard to demand and deliveries, confirming that 50% of its current aircraft orders have now been deferred to 2022. To mitigate the effects of the current drop in sales and deliveries, Embraer has launched a new sales campaign o try and boost aircraft deliveries in the shorter term.
