Triumph Group will continue supplying wings for the Global 7000 despite the eruption of dueling claims between the wing supplier and aircraft designer Bombardier, says Triumph chief executive Dan Crowley in an early February earnings call with analysts.
In December, Triumph filed a lawsuit in the Quebec courts against Bombardier, seeking to claim payments the supplier says it is owed. Bombardier has threatened to counter-sue based on alleged damages caused by delays to the Global 7000 programme due to the wing redesign.
Despite the legal trouble, Triumph remains a loyal supplier as the ultra-large cabin, ultra-long-range business yet moves closer to a scheduled entry-into-service in the second half of 2018.
“We continue to support the program, although we continue to assert our belief that we're due payments for work that's been completed over the last five years,” Crowley told analysts on a fourth quarter and 2016 earnings call.
The Global 7000 represents one of Triumph’s most ambitious development projects. The wing must be designed to achieve a maximum operating speed of Mach 0.925, second only to Cessna Citation X+ for speed among business jets. At the same time, the wing must be shaped to allow pilots to approach runways at the lowest possible speed.
By mid-2015, Bombardier had decided that the original wing design was inadequate for both purposes, so the manufacturer in July 2015 commissioned a redesign that pushed the programme two years behind schedule. As the wing supplier, Triumph bore the brunt of the costs to modify or replace the tooling used to build the redesigned structure.
Both companies argue that the others’ claims for payments are “without merit”, but will continue working together despite the legal claims.
Bombardier flew the first Global 7000 test aircraft last November from the assembly site at Downsview Airport near Toronto.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
