Graham Warwick/TORONTO
BOMBARDIER CHAIRMAN Laurent Beaudoin is "pleased" with the 52 firm orders which the Canadian company holds for the Global Express ultra-long-range business jet. Gulfstream has announced 63 firm orders for the rival GV, but the Global Express was launched a year later, Beaudoin says. The orderbook was revealed at the roll-out of the first Global Express in Toronto, on 26 August.
Beaudoin says that information revealed by privately owned Gulfstream, as part of its planned initial public offering, shows that the US company has agreed to take 33 GIVs in part-exchange for GVs, while Bombardier will take back only ten Canadair Challengers as a result of Global Express sales.
Bombardier Aerospace president Bob Brown says that the programme is on schedule and on budget, and the company is confident that the aircraft will meet the performance specification outlined at its launch in December 1993. Certification of the $34 million Global Express, designed to carry eight passengers and four crew 12,000km (6,500nm) at Mach 0.8, is scheduled for May 1998, but delivery of customer aircraft to completion centres will begin "around a year from now", he says.
Bombardier expects to fly the Global Express in the second half of this month. Limit-load testing is required before the first flight has been completed, using the complete-aircraft static-test article at Canadair in Montreal. Ground runs of the BMW Rolls-Royce BR710-48 engines are to begin within two weeks of the roll-out.
Production will be built up to three a month to work off the backlog, but is planned to stabilise at two a month -the same rate as that achieved with the Challenger. Beaudoin is confident of additional Global Express orders by the end of 1996 and is "comfortable" that Bombardier will win more than 50% of the market. Break-even point is 100 aircraft, he says.
The Canadian company is putting up half the C$800 million ($588 million) cost of developing the Global Express, with risk-sharing partners providing the rest. "The partnership has gone extremely well," Brown says. The partners are led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan, which designed, and builds, the wing.
The roll-out was attended by Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien, who, as a Government minister, purchased Canadair from General Dynamics in 1976 and approved funds to acquire the Challenger design. Beaudoin describes Chretien's actions as a "watershed" for Canadair.
Source: Flight International
