ATR (French: Avions de transport régional; Italian: Aerei da Trasporto Regionale; or "Regional Transport Airplanes" in English) is a Franco-Italian aircraft manufacturer headquartered in Blagnac, France, a suburb of Toulouse. It was formed during 1981 as a joint venture between Aérospatiale of France (now Airbus) and Aeritalia (now Leonardo) of Italy. The company's principal products are the ATR 42 and ATR 72 aircraft, of which it has developed multiple variants of both types. ATR has sold more than 1,600 aircraft and has over 200 operators in more than 100 countries. Manufacturing Leonardo's manufacturing facilities in Pomigliano d'Arco, near Naples, Italy, produce the aircraft's fuselage and tail sections. Aircraft wings are assembled at Sogerma in Bordeaux in western France by Airbus France. Final assembly, flight-testing, certification and deliveries are the responsibility of ATR in Toulouse, France. History 1980s During the 1960s and 1970s, European aircraft manufacturers had, for the most part, undergone considerable corporate restructuring, including mergers and consolidations, as well as moved towards collaborative multi-national programmes, such as the newly launched Airbus A300. In line with this trend towards intra-European cooperation, French aerospace company Aérospatiale and Italian aviation conglomerate Aeritalia commenced discussions on the topic of working together to develop an all-new regional airliner. Prior to this, both companies had been independently conducting studies for their own aircraft concepts, the AS 35 design in the case of Aerospatiale and the AIT 230 for Aeritalia, to conform with demand within this sector of the market as early as 1978. On 4 November 1981, a formal Cooperation Agreement was signed by Aeritalia chairman Renato Bonifacio and Aérospatiale chairman Jacques Mitterrand in Paris, France. This agreement signaled not only the merger of their efforts but of their separate concept designs together into a single complete aircraft design for the purpose of pursuing its development and manufacture as a collaborative joint venture. The consortium targeted a similar unit cost but a fuel consumption over a sector, nearly half the required by its 40-50 seat competitors, the British Aerospace HS.748 and Fokker F.27, and planned a 58-seat ATR XX stretch. This agreement served not only as the basis and origins of the ATR company, but also as the effective launch point of what would become the fledgling firm's first aircraft, which was designated as the ATR 42. By 1983, ATR's customer services division has been set up, readying infrastructure worldwide to provide support for ATR's