Bombardier will mark the 10th anniversary of Transport Canada approval of the pioneering Canadair Regional Jet, now the Bombardier CRJ, at the end of this month.
The most successful regional airline aircraft programme in history reaches this milestone on 31 July.
Over the last 10 years, the Bombardier CRJ family has grown to four models: the 44-passenger CRJ440, 40-50-passenger CRJ200, 70-passenger CRJ700 and 86-passenger CRJ900.
The latter is scheduled to receive Transport Canada type approval in the third quarter of this year.
At 30 June, firm orders for the Bombardier CRJ family stood at 1,208, with 692 of those delivered to 41 airlines and governments in 20 countries.
Options
Conditional orders and options numbered 1,281, for a Bombardier CRJ programme total of 2,489 aircraft.
If all of those aircraft are delivered, the Bombardier CRJ will become the second most successful jetliner ever built, after the Boeing 737.
"We knew before certification that we had an excellent airplane, but we had to convince the market that a then-radical regional jet had a place," says John Giraudy, president, Bombardier Regional Aircraft.
In 1991 he was vice-president, sales, for the new regional jet programme.
Tide
"The tide turned when Lufthansa CityLine reported outstanding results after only two months of revenue service.
Then Comair became the first US regional airline to introduce the Bombardier CRJ and the airplane became a ‘must have' among airlines around the world."
As of 31 July, the Bombardier CRJs in airline service will have flown about 4,500,000 sectors carrying an estimated 137.6 million passengers, assuming an average load factor of 60%.
Bombardier CRJ serial number 7004, the first delivered aircraft, entered revenue service with Lufthansa CityLine on 2 November 1992.
It is still in revenue service, and as of 30 May had flown 22,225h and 17,397 cycles.
Source: Flight Daily News
