Bombardier challenges big plane-makers with new jet

Farnborough: Bombardier launched a 110-130 seat passenger jet, the CSeries, on Sunday in a Canadian challenge to the supremacy of Airbus and Boeing.

Announcing the long-awaited launch on the eve of the Farnborough Air Show, the company said it had selected Mirabel near Montreal as the site to assemble the planes, which will enter service in 2013.

Mirabel had been competing with Kansas City, Missouri. The wings will be built in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Launch customer Lufthansa has provisionally ordered 30 planes with an option for 30 more, Bombardier said. The CSeries will sell for $46.7 million each.

Bombardier had said it was waiting for at least 50-100 orders before launching the aircraft.

"We are engaged in active and very promising discussions with a number of airlines worldwide," Chief executive Pierre Baudouin said.

Bombardier said the launch, coming at a time when rocketing fuel prices and a shaky economy have put the brakes on a boom in airline orders, would "revolutionise" the economics of the 100-149 seat segment due to green, fuel-efficient technology.

The CSeries marks a branching out from Bombardier's current lines of regional jets and turboprops, which hold up to 100 or 80 passengers respectively.

Big backlog

Airbus and Boeing have a combined backlog of about 1,100 aircraft of the types where Bombardier wants to poach business.

The five-abreast CSeries will compete with the smaller version of the single-aisle Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 families for new business or replacement of old planes like the MD-80.

The plane is powered by Pratt & Whitney engines.

Bombardier said it would receive loans from the governments of Canada and Quebec as well as Northern Ireland and the British government to fund a third of the research and development costs.

A similar system is used by Airbus but is being challenged by Boeing in a key US-European trade dispute.