Embraer held a rollout ceremony on Thursday morning for the new E190-E2 narrowbody in front of thousands of employees, guests and dignitaries at its assembly plant in São José dos Campos, Brazil. Scheduled for first flight in the second half of the year, the Pratt & Whitney PW1900G-powered E2 emerged from the factory following low-level fly-bys of landmark Embraer products, including its first regional airliner, the prop-driven EMB120 Brasília, and a duo of its newest business jets, the Phenom 300 and Legacy 500. The Brazilian air force’s aerobatic Esquadrilha de Fumaça accompanied Embraer’s KC-390 military transport in a nod to Embraer’s defense activities.

Embraer has further narrowed the timing of the prototype’s first flight, scheduled for the second half of this year, to the early part second half, in July or August. The E190-E2 program calls for the use of four flight-test airplanes, the second advanced to the point at which Embraer has attached its wings. The company plans to fly the first three airplanes in 2016 and the fourth--equipped with a full interior--early next year.

The timing of the rollout met the schedule set when Embraer launched the E2 family in 2013. Embraer plans to deliver the first E190-E2 in the first half of 2018. It has scheduled the larger E195-E2 entry into service (EIS) a year later and the smaller E175-E2 in 2020.

One of the keys to the program’s steady progress lies not in the main São José dos Campos campus, where the company displayed the first prototype and two others have reached advanced stages of completion, but across town in the Eugênio de Melo facility, where the E190-E2 iron bird nests.

The iron bird does not include an airframe, but it incorporates the E2’s components and systems, such as hydraulics, avionics and flight control. A hangar holds the major parts in rough alignment. The main landing gear sit side by side, along with the landing gear doors. As one of the sets of components altered from the E1, the doors have endured 300 cycles on the iron bird.

“Nowadays, it’s software--systems integration--that determines the date of first flight. The physical airplane is fine,” said Embraer Commercial Aviation COO Luis Carlos Affonso after the rollout. The iron bird has already performed 14,000 hours of tests since it started “flying” in mid-2015, and plans call for another 1,000 hours before the first prototype flight, and a total of 30,000 hours before certification.

Now building some 100 current-generation E-Jets a year, the company plans a two-year transition between production of the E1s and E2s, building E1s until at least 2020, said Embraer Commercial Airplanes CEO Paulo Cesar Silva. Production rates will increase slightly over the next two years, he added, and the company plans to maintain rates through the production transition.

With the E2 family, Embraer plans to serve the 70- to 130-passenger market it covered with the current four models with three E2 models. The E190-E2 serves as the baseline model and retains the E190’s current seating capacity, but has increased range to 2,800 nautical miles, or 400 more than E190 specifications show, as a result of increased fuel efficiency. The second model scheduled for EIS—the E195-E2—would carry three more rows of four-abreast passenger seats than the current E195 holds, giving it a maximum high-density capacity of 144 passengers once it enters service in 2019. Just ahead of the rollout, Embraer announced a 1.4 meter (4.6 foot) wingspan increase for the E195-E2, designed to increase range and improve performance especially in hot and high situations.

The E2 family has collected firm orders for 267 examples, as well as options on another 373, distributed among all three models.