Richard Aboulafia is the head of the Teal Group;
This delightful image of a bygone world was stunningly re-created in May when Bombardier received promises of $700 million in launch aid for its CSeries of 110/135-seat jetliners. Ottawa kicked in $320 million, Quebec $280 million, while the UK, hoping to replicate the DeLorean car experience in Northern Ireland, committed $100 million. I was disappointed to read this on the wires; I was hoping to see this nostalgic moment in a theater on a grainy black and white newsreel, with smiling, trench-coated ministers standing in front of DC-2s and De Havilland Dragon Rapides.
[…]
The 110/135-seat CSeries market is better than the 100-seat BRJ-X market, in the same way that death by hanging is way better than death by disembowelment. A revolutionary 110/135-seat design might just be competitive here. But the CSeries is stunningly non-revolutionary. So, this project would never happen without John Q. Mountie.
Even with this help, it still probably won’t happen. Government aid can help a marginal business case go ahead, as with the A380 or Japan’s aerostructure work. But no amount of sweetening — and the Canadian/UK offering is so sweet it’s saccharine — can make the CSeries go. The two major engine players in this class (CFM and IAE) responded to this sweet, yummy maple-flavored aid by just walking away.
If the CSeries was just a bad idea, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Bad ideas happen in this industry. If they didn’t, critics like me would be out of a job. What elevates the CSeries from “bad” to “carnivorously destructive” is what it means for the rest of Canada’s aerospace industry. It will suck up hundreds of millions of dollars, money that will be siphoned off from everything else.
Worse, the Canadian Government wants a vertically Canadian plane. David Emerson, Canada’s Minister of Industry, said “Canadian firms play key roles in many existing global aerospace projects, and the Government of Canada will work with companies across the aerospace industry to promote their capabilities to participate with Bombardier in the CSeries.” This means risk would be kept in country. If the CSeries fails, most of Canada’s aerospace suppliers will be dragged down with it.
Just another day in Paul Martin’s Bananada – where no price is too high when it comes to short term electoral gain in Quebec.
Not to mention that the feds also have an agency that will lend the taxpayers’ money to third-world countries to buy these things.
We’ve got seven or eight Bombardier aircraft decked out in Air Littoral livery lying dead at the Calgary airport. Air Littoral is – or was – a French regional carrier that went under. Wonder how many of our dollars went into backing this deal??
Re Littoral
http://tinyurl.com/7macv
partial answer…
thanks, Kate. It’s a starting point.
Exactly! (But did the owner(s) of Air Littoral have fourteen wives?) Bwaaaaahaha!
Interesting comments and likely a foreboding of what is to come.
Sadly Canada lost its aerospace industry decades ago anyways. But globally the industry has gone from being country centric to regional specific. I think the days of a ‘made in Canada’ plane are behind us in any fashion.
When you enter a new market their is always risk but you are supposed to gauge potential demand and be able to support that assumption with some research and even orders for business. I hope that has been the case here other than this being somebody’s idea of a good idea.
How Bombardier will kill Air Canada
Kate pointed me to an interesting piece by an aerospace commenator, explaining why the Liberal government’s “investment” in Bombardier’s new CSeries is a disastrous idea for Canada, Bombardier, and the entire domestic aerospace industry. He’s right, an…