Bombardier's CSeries operated at "typical airliner" cruise speeds for its first transatlantic flights to make its appearance at Le Bourget, test pilot Mark Elliott has revealed.
"The entire cruise was operated at Mach 0.78 and flight time was just under 7h," says Elliott, who is CSeries liaison pilot at Bombardier and piloted CS100 FTV-5 across from Montreal.
Max Kingsley-Jones/Flightglobal
Elliot says that the CSeries' long-range cruise speed for optimum fuel burn is Mach 0.73-0.74, but "we figured that 0.78 is probably a typical airliner flight [Mach] number to use, so we maybe shaved about 20min off the flight".
The CSeries' maximum cruise speed is Mach 0.82.
FTV-5's flight from Montreal to Le Bourget was operated at relatively low weights – there was a total of seven crew on board along with some aircraft spares. "We climbed straight out to Flight Level 390, and went up to FL410 about mid-Atlantic," says Elliott.
FTV-5, which is painted in the colours of launch operator Swiss, departed with "38,000lb" (17.3t) of fuel on board, says Elliott, and landed with "10,000lb".
"So we burned 28,000lb and, using ballpark numbers of 4,000lb/h [fuel burn], we still had about 2.5h of fuel left," he adds.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
