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Airbus executive calls C Series “an orphan”
Executives at Airbus Group SE, the world’s biggest plane maker, dismissed the Bombardier C Series jet as an “orphan” and said that talks between the two companies aimed at propping up the struggling Canadian aircraft are dead.
January 13, 2016 By The Globe and Mail
Speaking at Airbus’s annual press conference Tuesday in Paris, John Leahy, Airbus’s chief salesman and commercial officer, called the C Series “a nice little plane” that was probably forever doomed to be a poor seller.
The long-delayed plane, which was officially launched in 2008 and is to enter service with Swiss International Airlines by the summer, has secured only 243 firm orders. No fresh order has been booked in almost a year and a half, triggering a funding crisis that recently saw the Quebec government and the province’s pension fund pump $2.5-billion (U.S.) into the C Series and Bombardier’s train division to help give the parent company, Bombardier Inc. of Montreal, enough liquidity to support the new plane’s development and marketing. | READ MORE
