Regional Jet (Tallinn Lennart Meri) has unveiled plans to introduce four maiden ATR - Avions de Transport Régional (ATR) turboprops into its fleet for use on a long-term ACMI contract with SAS Scandinavian Airlines (SK, Copenhagen Kastrup).

According to a press release, the Estonian production carrier will operate four ATR72-600s for the Scandinavian airline from its Copenhagen Kastrup base beginning in August. The white-label contract runs for six years but can be terminated after three if need be. It replaces that with Jet Time (2006) (Copenhagen Kastrup) following the Danish ACMI/charter specialist's decision to exit this particular niche market. As such, SAS says Jet Time's other operations will either be scaled back completely or redistributed to other affiliate carriers.

Until now, Regional Jet's activities as a capacity provider have focussed entirely on its Estonian virtual carrier parent Nordica (ND, Tallinn Lennart Meri) for which it operates two CRJ700s and two CRJ900s (with another four due shortly). It also operates on behalf of LOT Polish Airlines (LO, Warsaw Chopin).