Farnborough Air Show, July 16: MRJ program analysis

After a long drought of orders or even LOIs and MOUs, the Mitsubishi MRJ program saw some life at this Farnborough Air Show. Sales of Japan’s first commercial airplane since the propeller-era’s YS-11 stalled with orders from SkyWest… Read More

CSeries setback as PW GTF has reported uncontained failure

Exclusive interview with Robert Saia, vice president of the Next Generation Product Family at Pratt & Whitney. PW believes it has a “good understanding” of what happened. Flight testing might resume quickly, reducing risk of program delay. Customers… Read More

Bombardier CSeries delays have little impact vs competitors

Bombardier’s third CSeries Flight Test Vehicle finally became airborne March 3. FTV 3 focuses on avionics. FTV 4 will focus on the testing of the Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbo Fan engine; Bombardier hasn’t announced a date when… Read More

Odds and Ends: Boeing’s bonus to Charleston workers; E-Jet E2 EIS; IAM and Airbus; Fending off A330neo

Boeing’s bonus to Charleston workers: We’ve ignored the continuing workmanship stories of Boeing’s Charleston plant on the 787 for the past months as Norwegian Air Shuttle, LOT and Air India continue to have problems with the airplane. We… Read More

Odds and Ends: CSeries timeline; KC-46A roll-out; China’s new airplane

CSeries timeline: Bombardier last week announced a third delay in the CSeries program, this time for as much as a year. This probably should have been expected. BBD originally planned a five year period between program launch and… Read More

Embraer continues and refines its strategy at the low-end of 100-149 seat sector

While Airbus and Boeing slug it out in the competition for the duopoly and Bombardier struggles to gain respect as an emerging mainline jetliner producer, Embraer continues and refines its strategy in the smaller-end of the jet market… Read More

Qatar swaps A319neo to A320neo; just 29-39 orders remain

Qatar Airways has swapped its order for the A319neo in favor of the A320neo, leaving just 29-39 orders remaining for the smallest version of the neo family. Qatar became the first customer for the A319neo when it placed… Read More

Is tide ready to turn for CSeries?

Is the tide ready to turn for the Bombardier CSeries? Following a nine month delay, the CS100 Flight Test Vehicle #1 took to the air September 16. It’s flown only twice since and has been undergoing ground vibration… Read More