Embraer APAC head Raul Villaron on why company is betting big on Southeast Asia

Raul Villaron, Embraer’s Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales and Head of Asia Pacific, looked entirely at home inside an E195-E2.

The aircraft, wrapped in a Hunnu Air livery, was quiet, spacious and, notably, free of the dreaded middle seat.

Villaron gestured at the two-by-two configuration around him. “Both [offer] aisle seat access,” he said with a grin.

The aircraft was on display at the Singapore Airshow 2026, an event which gave AeroTime the opportunity to sit down with Villaron to discuss why Southeast Asia could become one of the most important growth markets for the Brazilian planemaker’s E2 family of jets.

In a region shaped by island geography, budget-conscious airlines, and increasingly restless travelers, his pitch was surprisingly straightforward: the right plane, at the right size, for routes nobody else can serve profitably.

Islands, archipelagos, and the case for smaller jets

Southeast Asia’s geography practically writes its own  business case.. Indonesia stretches across more than 17,000 islands and is home to over 200 million people. The Philippines is an archipelago of more than 7,600 islands. In countries like these, roads simply don’t cut it.

“You can’t really commute via road. You need an aircraft,” Villaron said. “The E2 jets, which have a range of about six hours, can cover the whole island chain on one flight. It’s a good complement to bigger aircraft like the Airbus A320 or the 737-800, but when you have lower demand for secondary and tertiary cities, you use an aircraft this size.”

He sees the same logic playing out in Malaysia, Vietnam, and across the wider region. The common thread is demand that exists but isn’t being met because the available planes are either too small or too large for the job.

The gap between turboprops and narrowbodies 

Southeast Asian aviation has long been shaped by the dominance of low-cost carriers. Airlines in the region built their fleets around two extremes: turboprops for short hops and narrowbodyjets with 180 to 200 seats for busier trunk routes. For years, the model worked. But Villaron argued  that the economics are shifting.

“Low-cost carriers are struggling to keep growing at the same pace as in the past,” he explained. “This is due to inflation. Discretionary income has decreased, so people can’t fly as many times as they could before. So airlines are looking for other ways to grow.”

The problem, he said, is that turboprops are limited by range and narrow-bodies need high passenger volumes to fill their seats. In between sits a category of routes that are too long for one and too thin for the other. That gap is where Embraer plants its flag.

“There are unserved markets that are just too long for turboprops and too thin for narrowbodies,” Villaron said. “And that’s our main value proposition to the airlines.”

Making the math work for budget airlines

Convincing cost-conscious carriers to invest in a new aircraft type is no small task, and Villaron knows the pitch can sound counterintuitive at first. Historically, smaller aircraft came with higher per-seat costs, which made them a tough sell for airlines obsessed with unit economics.

But Embraer, he said, engineered its way out of that old equation. The E2 was a ground-up redesign with new wings, a fly-by-wire system, and next-generation engines. The result is an aircraft with significantly better fuel efficiency and lower maintenance costs. Because it’s lighter, it also incurs lower weight-related charges like navigation and parking fees.

“When you put all of that together, the E2 has about 30 percent lower trip cost than the A320 or 737, with a similar seat cost,” he explained. “That makes it affordable for low-cost carriers to sell tickets to people, but less risky for the airline because you’re spending 30 percent less on each trip.”

Outgrowing the turboprop

Beyond filling a market gap, Villaron sees a second wave of opportunity: turboprop replacement. Across the region, aging fleets of propeller-driven aircraft are still doing the heavy lifting on short routes, and passengers are growing tired of them.

“Lots of people are tired of turboprops,” he said, not mincing words. “They’re slow, they’re noisy, the seats aren’t as comfortable, and you can’t always carry your luggage. The E2 is a good upgrade for airlines that have reached the limit of what they can do with turboprops.”

The numbers back him up. An E2 configured with up to 146 seats can nearly double the capacity of a typical 70- to 80-seat turboprop, spreading fixed costs over more passengers. That means ticket prices can actually come down, not go up, when an airline makes the switch.

The operational case is just as compelling. At slot-constrained airports like Manila International Airport (MNL), Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta (CGK), and Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi (BKK), slow turboprops eat into the number of flights the runway can handle per hour. Manila has already begun shifting all turboprop operations to Clark International Airport (CRK) to ease the pressure.

Replacing them with jets frees up slots and helps ease bottleneck problems that have plagued the region’s busiest hubs.

“It’s a benefit for the passenger — they fly faster, they have more comfort,” Villaron said. “But it’s also a benefit to the operator and to the airport.”

Opening up new destinations for tourism

Tourism is the lifeblood of Southeast Asian aviation, and Villaron believes the E2 can unlock a new generation of destinations that bigger planes simply can’t serve economically.

“People want to go to new places,” he said. “You’ve been to Phuket once; you’ve been to Bali. You want to go somewhere else. But those newer destinations don’t have the same demand as Bangkok or Phuket, so you need a smaller plane to explore them.”

He pointed to Scoot, Singapore Airlines’ low-cost subsidiary, which already flies the E2 to destinations like Koh Samui, Fukuoka, Natuna, Malacca, and Davao. These are places where the parent airline’s widebodies would be far too large to operate viably.

“Using a smaller aircraft, you can add multiple connections, bring more tourists, create more jobs, and generate more GDP for the country,” Villaron said. “You start with two or three weekly frequencies and build up as the market grows.”

He sees that same playbook working for carriers in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, where national airlines and low-cost operators alike could use right-sized jets to link their main hubs with smaller cities that are currently underserved or completely unconnected.

An untapped market, and only the beginning

Embraer already counts some of the world’s biggest airlines among its customers. Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, and United all fly its jets. In Asia, the company has established footholds in Japan, Australia, and Singapore. But the rest of Southeast Asia remains largely uncharted territory, and that’s exactly what has Villaron energized.

“I’m excited because it’s an untapped market for us,” he said. “Now airlines in the region see the benefits with Scoot flying to their countries, and more passengers are getting to know Embraer. I see huge growth for us here.”

As we wrapped up our  conversation inside the quiet cabin of the E2, the message was clear. Embraer is not just attending the Singapore Airshow to showcase an aircraft. It’s here to make the case that Southeast Asia’s next chapter of aviation growth won’t come from bigger planes, but from smarter ones.

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