Update 1.1: Fixed flaps

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House Livery

Image is clickable.

The TAP Express livery has a lot of text labels, so if you're afraid of lag, feel free to download this alternate livery.

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Notes

This is for WinsWings's Regional Airliner Challenge, which, as you can see, I'm 13 hours late for, because I had irl stuff going on. Hopefully, it'll still be accepted.

The livery here may seem underwhelming, since it's made out of text labels. However, I spent about 1 hour just to Photoshop the tail logos to remove all the watermarks. Furthermore, the tail logos for the left and right sides are completely different, so it took me a while to find accurate ones.

I also spent countless hours tweaking all the mechanical items on this aircraft, so don't be mistaken that this is just my D-01 copied and pasted over; this is really a clean-sheet design.

Also, this plane was partially based off the Embraer E190, so it looks quite similar.

I hope you'll leave an upvote or spotlight on the D-02, and as always, enjoy my long, long lore!

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About the D-02

Source: Wikipedia

The RCP Engineering D-02 is a series of short-haul regional airliners built to compete with the Bombardier CRJ series and Embraer E-Jet family.

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History

Riding on the success of the D-01 family, RCP Engineering's Airliner Manufacturing division hired new workers, and opened a new assembly line at Martin South Airport.

But most notably, RCPe decided to expand into the regional sector, beginning work on a new advanced regional airliner that would replace aircraft like the DC-9 and Boeing 717.

By 2001, preliminary design work was completed, and the D-02 was announced at the 2001 Paris Air Show. Major airlines like Air France, Japan Airlines's J-Air and British Airways placed firm orders on the aircraft.

On 7 March 2003, the first functional D-02 prototype, registered WT-XDC, made its first flight from Martin South Airport. In total, 3 prototypes were built, and they flew at the Farnborough and Paris Airshows.

The first production-model D-02, a -300, was delivered to Air France in 2005. The -200 (smallest model) made its first commercial flight 7 months later, and the -400 (largest model) did so in 2006.

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Design: High-Wing VS Low-Wing

The original design submitted by the RCPe engineers was a high-wing, T-tail aircraft, similar to the BAe 146/RJ100.

A sketch of the original D-02 concept.

Although a high-wing design allowed for better performance and lower landing speeds, the RCPe supervisors rejected the proposal as:

• the engines would be harder to maintain,
• as the engines are located right next to the fuselage, the amount of cabin noise would be astronomical,
• a high-wing design would prevent the fuselage from being stretched,
• and finally, the D-02 would cater to US and European airlines which already had access to well-developed airports, so performance on uneven terrain was a low priority.

In the end, the engineers went back to the drawing board and came up with a low-wing design, which is what you see today.

I'm not kidding; I actually changed the entire plane's design abruptly after considering these.

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Flying with TAP Express

Yes, TAP is a real airline (it's literally Portugal's flag-carrier), and TAP Express operates E190s in real life. However, in my fictional universe, instead of E190s, the airline chose to fly D-02-300s.

Note that the E-Jet family coexists with the D-02 family, it's just that some airlines flew D-02s, while others still chose to fly E170s and E190s.

The registration is real, and it belonged to an E145 operated by Portugália Airlines, the predecessor to TAP Express.

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Feel free to make liveries on my plane, but please tag me on them!

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Full List of My Builds (click on this)