Launching a new era

If the powers-that-be at Bombardier Aerospace believe in omens, the long-awaited first flight of the company’s CS100 twin jet on Sept. 16 suggests they have good reason to be optimistic. Shortly before it lifted off from Mirabel Airport, there was an almost biblical moment when sullen rain clouds receded to the south and north of the runway, making way for clear skies and bright sunshine. As if that wasn’t enough, a brisk northerly breeze could have been taken as a portent of stiff competition ahead for Boeing, Airbus and Embraer in the narrow-body market.

Minutes after chief pilot Charles “Chuck” Ellis had landed Flight Test Vehicle 1 (FTV1) with a minimal puff of tire smoke after a two-and-a-half-hour flight, he and senior Bombardier brass were justifiably all smiles. “Exactly like the simulation,” Ellis said of the clean-sheet design. “It flew very well.” He volunteered later that there had been one “minor” issue, “a small advisory message on one of the subsystems.” He said that if the aircraft had been in commercial service, it would not have been a problem.

With Bombardier since 1996, Ellis is a former Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) long-range patrol pilot and flight instructor, who spent a year at the U.S. Air Force test pilot school in California, and who haslogged more than 8,000 hours in about 80 types of aircraft. The pilot of the Bombardier Global 5000 chase plane, Scott “Scooter” Whitley, is another ex-RCAF pilot who had brought that aircraft up from the company’s test centre in Wichita, Kan., several weeks earlier.

During the test flight, both aircraft flew a “racetrack” formation north of Mirabel, a “mid-envelope” endeavour for the CS100 in terms of aircraft weight. Altitude and speed were conservative at about 12,500 feet and 230 knots, but the crew also cycled the landing gear, which isn’t customary on a first flight, and experimented with various flap settings. “It was quite an extensive first-flight test curve,” explained Rob Dewar, vice-president and CSeries general manager.

Bombardier engineers are now well into the analysis of more than 14,000 data points, each a set of on or more measurements of a single element of the first flight. As for that subsystem advisory issue during theflight, a spokesperson told Canadian Skies 10 days post-flight that although “we do not have details… other than to say it’s been cleared,” FTV1 had completed two more test flights by press time in mid- October. One of the principal tasks was the collection of more data on the aircraft’s noise footprint. 

Once FTV1 and the four other flight test aircraft (they are in final assembly along with first production CS100 and CS300 aircraft) have completed 2,400 hours of flight and other testing into next summer, millions of data points will have been collected and analyzed, as Bombardier begins preparing production aircraft for potential delivery to the first CSeries customers in late 2014. Dewar suggested that even if that is delayed, he doesn’t expect Bombardier to be penalized by its customers. “They’re supporting us very well,” he said.

With a 110-seat capacity and a maximum takeoff weight of 129,000 pounds, the CS100 is the smaller of the two fl by-wire CSeries aircraft. Its CS300 sibling has 135 seats and a max takeoff weight of 144,000 pounds. With some reconfiguration of their single-aisle cabins, their seating can be expanded to 125 and 160. Asked about the potential for larger versions, Mike Arcamone, president of Bombardier’s commercial division, said that while the focus is on the CS100 and CS300, Bombardier obviously would continue to study the market and that anything else would be “‘way out in the future.”

Meanwhile, there is true global interest in an aircraft which is said to have a fuel burn advantage of up to 20 per cent over its competitors, as well as significantly lower emissions from its Pratt & Whitney Pure-Power PW1500G geared turbofans. These and other design features, including a claimed “best in class widebody environment,” add up to at least an eight per cent reduction in seat costs.

Lufthansa, which was on hand for the first flight, placed the first CSeries order in July 2008, for up to 60 aircraft. Lease Corporation International, with facilities in Europe and Singapore, followed in March 2009, with orders for up to 40. The first North American order, and the largest to date, was in February 2010 when Indianapolis-based Republic Airways Holdings – which owns Chautauqua Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Republic Airlines and Shuttle America – put in for up to 80 aircraft.

Since then, Bombardier has added Braathens Leasing Ltd. of Sweden (up to 10 aircraft); Gulf Air, Bahrain (up to 16); Odyssey Airlines, London (10); Korean Air (up to 20); PrivatAir, Geneva (up to 10); airBaltic, Latvia (10); and Ilyushin Finance Co., Moscow (up to 42). In all, well before FTV1’s first flight, the company had orders for 63 CS100s and 114 CS300s, with options on 131 more and purchase rights on 20.

The sole domestic prospect so far is Porter Airlines, headquartered at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, which currently depends on its fleet of Bombardier Q-400 NextGen turboprops to provide regional service to a dozen eastern domestic cities, as well as New York, Chicago, Boston and Washington. It needs the CSeries’ legs of up to 5,500 kilometres to provide non-stop service to markets such as Vancouver, Los Angeles, Florida and the Caribbean.

Porter’s president and chief executive officer, Robert Deluce, who was at Mirabel for the first flight, has a purchase agreement for up to 30 CS100s with first delivery in 2016. However, he said, that is “conditional on getting the necessary approval from the City of Toronto, the federal government and the Toronto Port Authority” to operate the CS100 from the downtown island airport. The prospect of jet service is opposed by a small, but vocal, group of local residents worried mainly about noise.

But the CS100’s turbofans were so quiet on its firstflight that its takeoff caught many of the crowd of more than 3,000 at Mirabel, including many veteran aircraft watchers, by surprise. “If you were looking the other way, you might well have missed it,” agreed Deluce, who has flown various types of aircraft, mostly turboprop twins, since the 1960s, but now confines himself to his float-equipped Cessna 185 for pleasure.

Calling the CS100 a “whisper jet,” Deluce told Canadian Skies that it is “absolutely the right choice for Porter and for Billy Bishop” because of its “very strong environmental record” and the fact that “it’s the quietest commercial jet in production.” He said it’s comparable to the Q400s Porter flies now. A key element in using the airport, however, is getting permission to extend the main runway by 168 metres (551 feet) metres at either end, and perhaps even 200 (656 feet).

“Longer is better from the point of view of not having to use as much power,” Deluce pointed out. “Being able to take off with less power equates to a quieter takeoff. . . . If there’s an opportunity to turn a quiet aircraft into a quieter one, that’s worth considering.” He also said that it would tie nicely into a Transport Canada plan to extend runway safety areas at key airports across the country.

The CSeries program spokesperson acknowledged that Bombardier is “well aware” of the City of Toronto’s requirements, and is working toward providing “adequate data . . . specific to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport.”

A successful deal with Porter would be an important measure of confidence in a Canadian product, but it would be only a small segment of a narrow-body market which Bombardier estimates at more than 19,000 aircraft over the next couple of decades, with a worth of at least $250 billion. Arcamone told Canadian Skies that he remains “absolutely” confident that the ”game-changer” CSeries can account for at least half of that market.

While the program looks like a winner, it hasn’t been entirely free of turbulence since the concept was unveiled in 2004. Two years later, Bombardier put it on hold because of low initial orders. Then, in 2007, it was put back on the front burner, and the sales pitch began anew to prospective customers in early 2008.

Arcamone said the first flight had convinced current and prospective CSSeries buyers that the aircraft will deliver what the company had promised years earlier. “I’m still trying to . . . calm down,” he grinned. “I couldn’t find any word other than ‘wow’ . . . to see it fly.”