MONTREAL — Bombardier plans to upgrade the regional jets that have been neglected during the company’s struggle to build its biggest-ever plane, the CSeries.
Design changes such as new winglets and a modified wing are under development that would cut the jets’ fuel burn by at least 4.5 percent by 2020, said executives including Jean-Francois Tessier, director of program strategy. Bombardier also is in talks with Asian and North American carriers that may lead to orders in the next few months, he said.
The CRJ family was Bombardier’s flagship commercial line before the planemaker opted to emphasize the larger CSeries, which is two years late and whose $5.4 billion program cost is at least $2 billion over budget. While working on the CSeries, Bombardier has seen the CRJ sales fall behind those of Embraer SA’s regional models, which are being fitted with new engines.
“We are committed to the CRJ platform for at least the next 15 years,” Hugues Lessard, vice president and general manager of the CRJ program, said Friday at the company’s Mirabel plant north of Montreal. “Where we maybe erred a bit, where we made a faux pas, is that we put so much focus on the CSeries. Some people thought we were going to stop building regional jets and exit the market, but nothing could be further from the truth.”
Bombardier invented the regional jet in the late 1980s with the 50-seat CRJ200, a derivative of its Challenger business aircraft. The CRJs are as large as 104 seats, compared with as few as 108 for the smallest CSeries models.
Brazil’s Embraer had taken a different tack with its E-Jet line. In 2013, the planemaker opted to invest about $1.7 billion in its updated E2 regional jet series. Embraer won 210 orders for the new E2s in 2013 and 2014, almost triple the 76 regional- jet orders Bombardier booked in the same period.
Bombardier isn’t disclosing for now how much it plans to invest in the CRJ series, Lessard said. New design software makes it possible to improve the jets’ fuel performance, he said.
The CRJ900 already burns 5.5 percent less fuel than the version that entered service in 2003, and Bombardier is committed to a “double-digit” reduction in consumption by 2020, Tessier said.
“In fact, we are working on much more than 10 percent,” he said. “We’re reducing the weight. We’re looking at how we could use the CSeries materials on a CRJ, for instance an aluminum-lithium hybrid, but we see this as a long-term process. In the short term, we think we can make many improvements to the wing, to its design.”
Bombardier has garnered more than 1,800 firm orders for CRJs since the program began, and today more than 60 airlines worldwide operate the aircraft.
In February, American Airlines signed a firm order for 24 CRJ900s valued at $1.1 billion at list prices. Mesa Air Group, an American Airlines partner, followed suit this month with a deal for seven jets, and “we have many more orders that are going to come,” said Lessard. He wouldn’t be more specific.
Outside the U.S., the world’s biggest regional-jet market, Bombardier has high hopes for Asia. After winning an order from Garuda Indonesia in 2012, Bombardier has “other active campaigns right now,” Tessier said without identifying potential customers.
China, where Bombardier counts China Express Airlines as its most recent customer, “is going to grow exponentially,” Tessier said. “Today Chinese airlines are focusing on connections between the large cities, and the next step will be to link smaller towns to the big hubs. That’s the model that China Express is following.”
Bombardier sees demand for the CRJ series remaining strong for many years.
“The CRJ is a money-making machine for the operators,” Lessard said. “It’s a very dependable aircraft.”
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