CSeries first flight this morning 0930 EDT

It’s 0-dark-30 here on the West Coast, waiting for the Bombardier CSeries first flight in 45 minutes.

You can watch on the Bombardier webcast here, where it will go live just before, according to Tweets. You can follow on Twitter at #CSeries.

4 Comments on “CSeries first flight this morning 0930 EDT

  1. I am excited to see the CSeries finally take flight. I hope it does well. IMHO there is a market segment for it as the B736 and A318 aren’t really optimized for the CSeries seat range.

    My concern is however

    1)Slow sales
    2)Will it “stack up” against the competing Embraers?

    • 1) Slow sales: This is actually a good thing. It only reflects the high asking price, not deficiencies of the aircraft. But what this implies is that it will bring more cash early on. And right now BBD needs all the cash it can garner. This programme is stretching BBD’s financial capabilities to the limit. By the time the 177 firm orders are built and delivered new orders will surely have come in. All this at a rate commensurate with BBD’s production capacity. In other words if it had 500+ orders this would have a negative impact for BBD, which would be unable to satisfy the demand in a timely manner. What is important for BBD at this stage is to have a large customer base. For it is better to have 177 orders from a dozen or so customers than one huge order from a single customer.

      2) Will it “stack up” against the competing Embraer: The CSeries is four or five years ahead of the ERJ E2. The CSeries is now a real aircraft that has already started to generate inflight performance data. Speculation gives way to evaluation. Besides, the ERJ and the CSeries are not in the same category. The CS100 that flew today is the smallest variant and is already larger than the biggest ERJ. The CS300 is coming fast and the CS500 will probably be announced not long after the former will have entered service. And we must not forget the superior range of the CSeries. And many more things; but I will stop here and go directly to what could be the deciding factor for some operators: the price tag. At what cost can Embraer produce the ERJ E2 versus the CSeries? My impression is that the CSeries will be relatively cheap to build because of the highly efficient technology involved in its production. On the other hand the ERJ will probably get more expensive to build in the future for two reasons: it is behind by at least four years (inflation); and the labour costs will more than likely continue to climb along with the real. That means in four or five years from now Bombardier should be in a better position to compete with Embraer on price. And with Boeing and Airbus for that matter.

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