Industry Airbus takes majority in Bombardier's CSeries

Under the agreement, Airbus will provide procurement, sales and marketing, and customer support expertise to the CSALP, the entity that manufactures and sells the C Series. Airbus announced, it will open an additional final assembly line for the C-Series in Mobile, Alabama to serve US customers. The existing assembly line in Quebec will remain and be taken over by Airbus. Bombardier expetcs cost savings due to increased supply chain processes.

"This is a win-win for everybody! The C Series, with its state-of-the-art design and great economics, is a great fit with our existing single-aisle aircraft family and rapidly extends our product offering into a fast growing market sector. I have no doubt that our partnership with Bombardier will boost sales and the value of this programme tremendously,” said Airbus CEO Tom Enders.

Some weeks ago, the CSeries program was hit by a 300% import levy by the US government following a complaint from rival US Boeing that the company had dumped its CSeries jets at low prices. Shortly after announcing the deal Boeing stated “This looks like a questionable deal between two heavily state-subsidised competitors to skirt the recent findings of the US government. Our position remains that everyone should play by the same rules for free and fair trade to work.”

Bombardier has struggeled to receive new orders in 2017. In 2016, Delta Air Lines announced to buy 75 Bombardier CSeries 100 aircraft for the domestic market. Until now 360 Bombardier CSeries aircraft from several airlines have been ordered. 14 aircraft have been delivered to launch customer Swiss Global Air Lines and AirBaltic.

The new cooperation might have an impact on the CSeries competitor Airbus A319Neo production. Until now, Airbus has received only 51 orders for the smallest A320Neo Family product. It remains unclear how the new cooperation partners plan to divide the market for their two similar products.

Bombardier's CSeries is available in two versions: The CS100 for up to 133 passengers and the CS300 for up to 160 passengers in a single class configuration.

The first aircraft took of for the first flight in 2013 and the first delivery to Lufthansa's subsidiary Swiss took place in July 2016.

The regional aircrafts main competitors are Embraer's Emb195-E2, Boeing's B737 MAX7 and the Airbus A319Neo.