What I have understood from Alain Bellemare’s interview on CJAD
Aero Nouvelle
A few days before the certification of the CS100, Bombardier president Alain Bellemare gave an 40 minute interview at the radio station CJAD. I t was only on Wednesday that I caught wind of this interview and my thanks go out to Sylvan Faust for having published it on his website fliegerfaust.com. I have one thing to share with you from this interview.
M. Bellemare clearly explained that in order to relaunchthe C Series , Bombardier would need “one or two great orders”. He mentioned hat the company is ready to make the necessary efforts to meet the comercialy challenging terms in order to obtain the orders in question. According to Mr Bellemare, once the C Series has regained momentum Bombardier will be able to gradually increase their price. This statement explains the rumour that started circulating during the holidays that Bombardier was being very aggressive about the price of the C Series.
It is often said that the devil is in the detail and there is one detail from Mr Bellemare’s speech that stands out. « Bombardier needs one or two decent orders in order to launch the C Series. Series ». As we know that Bombardier has been heavily involved in negotiations with at least three aviation companies : United Airlines, JetBlue and Air Canada. Mr Bellemare’s proposals means that Bombardier has most likely decided to focus on one or two of these three companies and is very hopeful that it will sign a deal with a least one of the two companies possibly both. If we want to find out which of the three companies is still in the running then we simply have to ask ourselves which of them is the most likely to give new momentum to the C Series. .
In my opinion United Airlines is the company that is most likely to do so according to the aforementioned criteria. It is the largest of the three companies with over 700aircraft and its global network and its fame in the world of aviation being far superior to that of the two others. Although JetBlue operates almost exclusively in the Americas getting an order from them would be of great symbolic value. One has to remember that JetBlue is the company that brought the Ejet-190 into service, it made a fixed order of 100 units with the option of 100 more. But JetBlue never took advantage of his options and has never had more than 65 E-190s in its fleet. If Bombardier obtained this order it would send out a message that the superior qualities of the C Series are enough to cover the costs of transition from the E-190 to the CS-100. But this order is probbaly the most difficult to seal because it is likely that Embrarer will not back down without a fight. As for Air Canada, it is in the top 20 or even in the top 10 according to certain criteria. Even if this places it above JetBlue highly doubt that its name has the necessary resonance. Remember that this doesn’t mean that Air Canada won’t buy the C Series, but I would more likely say that its powers of negotiation are not as strong and so will perhaps have to pay the price.
As for United Airlines, it will be decided very soon as the pilots’ union is currently holding a vote up to January 22ndwith the aim of ratifying an extension of the current convention collective. It will probably be after that United Airlines will announce its decision on purchasing new 100 seat aircraft.