By Bjorn Fehrm

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Introduction

February 20, 2020, © Leeham News: As we wrote in last week's article about the A220 flying the Montreal to Toulouse route, the stakes are high in the civil airliner business. If you don’t have a very strong balance sheet you shouldn't enter the business.

Bombardier learned this the hard way. Its follow up project to its successful CRJ regional jets, the CSeries, brought Bombardier to the brink of bankruptcy and it had to sell the project to Airbus at a fraction of its value. The project cost more to develop and produce than planned despite not running off the rails during development like Boeing's 787 or Mitsubishi's MRJ.

We analyze why it cost so much and at what fraction Airbus got the program.

Summary:

• The CSeries nearly doubled its development costs despite being void of major hiccups. What was the cause?
• Airbus picked up the program when Boeing forced Bombardier to sell. How much of a bargain did Airbus get?