IN THE early 2000s it looked a safe bet that the turboprop was on its way out, as far as airlines were concerned. Planes with jet engines were faster, more comfortable and somehow more modern-looking than ones with whirly things on the wings. Embraer, Brazil's aircraftmaker, stopped making its EMB-120 Brasília and went over entirely to producing jets.

But now, even as regional airlines continue to phase out their older turboprops, a new generation of planes with propellers is taking off. ATR, a European maker of turboprops that is jointly owned by Airbus's parent EADS and Finmeccanica of Italy, had a record year last year, winning firm orders for 157 planes and options for a further 79. Like Airbus and Boeing it now has an order book stretching years ahead. And like the bigger planemakers it is ramping up its output to meet the demand: in 2005, the turboprop's darkest hour, ATR made just 15 of them. Last year it made 53, this year it is aiming to make more than 70, and in 2014 it wants to turn out 85.

ATR's big order from Kingfisher seems to have gone pear-shaped in recent weeks as the Indian airline's financial troubles have worsened. But this week the planemaker signed a big deal with Wings Air of Indonesia, which will eventually have a fleet of 60 ATR turboprops, of which 40 will be its latest model, the 72-600 (pictured), which seats up to 74.

Bombardier of Canada also has a new, high-tech turboprop, the Q400. It struggled to win orders last year but has high hopes that 2012 will be much better: this week it said an undisclosed customer had ordered five of its new planes. It will battle ATR for a chunky 40-plane order that WestJet, a Canadian carrier, is planning to make soon, as it launches a new regional airline subsidiary. The Teal Group, an aviation consultancy, forecasts a market of around $2 billion a year for turboprops from now into the 2020s—a nice little business, though still a fraction of the market for jets.

As in most industries these days, it is important to ask: what about the Chinese? The answer, as usual, is that they are determined to get in the game. Xi'an Aircraft, a subsidiary of AVIC, the Chinese state aerospace giant, had a big presence at the Dubai air show in November, showing off its new MA600 turboprop, a 50-seat upgrade of its MA60 plane, as well as a 19-seater called the Aircar, aimed at corporate users, tour operators and the like.

In December a bunch of orders from African airlines brought combined orders for the MA60 and MA600, including those already delivered, to over 200. Shuyu Zhai, an executive at Xi'an Aircraft, says its parent company has set it the target of overtaking its European and Canadian rivals to become the world's number-one turboprop-maker by 2020. Aviation Week's print edition recently reported that AVIC had set up an airline to operate MA60s, hoping that by doing so it would gain useful insights that would help it design the next generation of turboprops. An Indian government agency is also working on a “national” turboprop.

It's all about oil

The reason for the turboprop revival is simple: the oil price. Filippo Bagnato, ATR's boss, explains that the turnaround began when crude rose above $35 a barrel in the years following the Iraq war. Planes powered by jets are faster, but for flights of less than around 500 nautical miles, the shorter time spent in the air is insignificant compared with the fuel savings to be made by flying a slower turboprop. As it has become increasingly uneconomic to fly regional jets with fewer than around 70 seats, the turboprop has come to look like a better option. There seems little chance of oil going back down to the levels that had for a while made their fuel efficiency unimportant.

There's just one problem: “turbo aversion”, as a Bombardier spokesman describes it. Passengers, especially those who have flown in the earlier generations of turboprops, regard them as noisy, uncomfortable, and less safe than jets. As Xi'an Aircraft's Mr Zhai notes, this aversion varies considerably by region: in South America, for instance, it is hardly a problem. But in the growing Middle East market, turbo aversion is strong, he says, because of “a very common misconception” that they are accident-prone.

As for the question of noise and discomfort, the turboprop-makers have put a lot of effort into improving the quality of their planes' cabins, and in particular in reducing noise and vibration. Bombardier uses noise-cancellation technology, whereas ATR uses insulation, and fancy electronics to synchronise the propellers. To try to persuade travellers to think again about their turbo aversion, Bombardier is advertising their (relatively) green credentials, since their fuel efficiency means lower carbon-dioxide emissions than jets.

Makers of big jet engines, such as CFM, are also beginning to take an interest in developing fuel-efficient open-rotor engines. Airlines, under pressure to cut their emissions, could be persuaded to equip their planes with such engines if it spares them some of the cost of buying emissions permits. In all, we are likely to be seeing more planes with propellers in the skies in years to come. However, as a NASA study finds, for all the work that has gone into making their cabins quieter open-rotor planes are still likely to remain noisier on the outside than jets. Turboprops may once again be generating a buzz, but not the sort of buzz that is welcome for those who live near airports.

Read on: Boeing struggles to fulfil a rush of orders