Italian airline SkyAlps has signed a letter of intent with Tamarack Aerospace for the installation of active winglets on its De Havilland Dash 8-400 fleet, which it expects to reach 14 aircraft early next year. The airline also plans avionics upgrades for its Dash 8s.
Tamarack Eco-SmartWing active winglets will improve the performance and safety of SkyAlps’s modified fleet while offering significantly reduced emissions, noise pollution reduction, and "meaningful" fuel savings, according to the companies. The active winglets are designed to alleviate gust loads, minimizing additional structural weight needed for the winglet installation and thus providing a greater efficiency improvement compared with passive winglets.
Although the companies haven't finished with final details, SkyAlps plans a demonstration tour with its modified Dash 8-400, starting from Bolzano, Italy, then to Dubai, UAE, and onward to Tokyo, Japan, in November.
Other airlines' aircraft could benefit from Tamarack's active winglets, which the company has made available on many Cessna CitationJet models. “It's not exclusive to SkyAlps,” Guida said. “We want to outfit as many as we can. Since the June 16 [announcement], we have had several other Q400 operators call us and ask. The bigger the fleet the better. In the whole fleet, there are 586 [Dash 8-400s]. I'd love to have half of those.”
SkyAlps accountable manager Alex Spinato said he could not divulge information on the planned avionics upgrades to the Dash 8-400 because final details remain incomplete. “We are working hard to improve the avionics of the Q400, at least at SkyAlps,” he told AIN. “At the moment, we cannot share the avionics brand because we are still discussing it with the provider. We believe that with new avionics, we can save fuel and weight. The avionics upgrade is our second main target.”