Dassault has begun talks with Safran over compensation payments for delays to its Falcon 5X business jet caused by the engine manufacturer’s late-running Silvercrest programme.
In early 2016 the French airframer announced a near three-year delay to entry-into-service for the ultra-wide 5X, pushing back first delivery from 2017 to 2020, which it blamed on problems with the new Silvercrest powerplant.
That slippage has already hit Dassault’s backlog figures, with 12 cancellations for the 5X recorded in its 2016 order and delivery totals.
Eric Trappier, Dassault’s chief executive, says it has started negotiations with Safran about “requesting a certain level of compensation” for both the cancellations and the additional development and engineering costs it has incurred.
He declines to specify the figure it is requesting from the engine supplier but concedes that it is a “big amount”.
“Obviously there is a contract and they are in a gap in this contract and we have got some talks about this contract performance,” Trappier said at a Paris results briefing on 8 March.
Under Safran’s revised schedule it will deliver fully tested Silvercrest engines to Dassault in 2018 for integration on to the 5X.
Trappier says it is vital that Safran keeps to the new timetable as it cannot afford any further delays to the programme, not least with rival Gulfstream on track to begin deliveries of its competing G500 this year.
“The first strong request we made [to Safran] was to get the engine working. The second strong demand was that they should stick to the new schedule because the old timetable was well behind us.”
Dassault forecasts 45 deliveries across its Falcon family of business jets in 2017, down from the 49 it handed over last year.
Trappier says the market continues to be soft, amid global economic and political uncertainty. “Today I do not believe the market is going to recover very fast in 2017,” he says.
Any upturn will come “little by little”, with the sector beginning to turn “by 2018”.
Low demand for new aircraft has also put pressure on prices for new aircraft, he says.
“To sell Falcons we had to go out and fight to bring down prices.”
However, he says France’s high social and employment costs compared with those of its competitors based in Canada and the USA mean it is operating at a disadvantage.
“It is more difficult to manufacture aircraft in France at a certain price than it is in the United States,” he says.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
