Just weeks after announcing that it would not be launching the CSeries small airliner, Bombardier is at Asian Aerospace with a full-size mock-up of the cabin… for the CSeries.
The CSeries team is talking to potential customers and partners, including, it is understood, Sukhoi, which is lead partner in the project to develop the RRJ small airliner.
CSeries is very much alive, albeit with a reduced size team at Bombardier, according to Benjaman Boehm, director, programme management office, New Commercial Aircraft Programme, speaking at Asian Aerospace yesterday (pictured above).
“The world misconstrued it as being on hold,” he said. “The project was never put on hold, but remains out there for the world to progress it. The company still believes in the market.
“Our market research team still projects 6,000 units over the next 20 years and from our standpoint we are going to be in that market one way or another.” Boehm said that the significant CSeries presence at Asian Aerospace was to make sure that potential customers or partners got the “correct story”.
He said: “We are here and we have not gone away. We feel it vitally important that we continue to have our market presence and at the same time the market is telling us they want us here.
“This is still a massive growth region and a 100 seats is almost ideal as a point-to-point aircraft. “This is the kind of market where you need aircraft capable of flying into difficult airports. It is a region where low-fare carriers are starting to really grow. CSeries has a 15% better economy. “We have to be here. The programme is not cancelled.”
Boehm said that the announcement of a reduced-scale programme was designed to ensure that potential customers were not misled. “We did not want people to think we were leading them on.”
He declined to say who the CSeries team were talking to in terms of potential partners, but said that “prudent companies” were always in discussions with firms that might become partners.
Boehm said he did not think that Bombardier was sending out mixed signals about the CSeries. In parallel with the press announcement, discussions had been held with potential customers to explain the move. “They told us that the project was the right project.”
The CSeries family of aircraft would comprise the C110 110-passenger and the C130 135-passenger versions. After a 350-strong engineering team had spent $10 million a month developing the CSeries, it was scaled back to 50 people who will spend $20 million over the coming year rethinking the business plan for the airliner.
Source: Flight Daily News
