Bombardier’s revised schedule for Learjet 85 called ‘aggressive’
Even the revised schedule for Bombardier Inc.’s Learjet 85 business aircraft, which was pushed back six months on Thursday, is “an aggressive time frame,” a business-jet analyst said Friday.
Company president Pierre Beaudoin said in a teleconference call Thursday that the business jet, due to enter service by the end of this year, will be about six months late and is now scheduled for delivery by mid-2014. The company previously announced its CSeries airliner’s first flight will also be delayed by six months.
“Bombardier’s claim of somewhere next year (for the Learjet 85), I guess, is feasible,” said Brian Foley of New Jersey-based Brian Foley Associates. “But it doesn’t look like there’s a lot of slop in there. Things will have to be executed pretty cleanly.”
“It’s a brand new design and it still hasn’t flown yet. It seems like a reasonable place to move the stake to. But it’s an aggressive time frame. Other recent business jets that are brand new platforms typically take between one and two years between first flight and certification.”
“So it’s a little aggressive — but it’s been done before.”
Foley said Cessna Aircraft Co.’s Citation Mustang took about 19 months, from first flight in April 2005 to delivery in November 2006; Embraer’s Phenom 100 micro-jet also took about 17 months, from July 2007 to December 2008; and Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.’s latest, the G650, from November 2009 to December 2012 — although that program was delayed further by a fatal crash during flight-testing.
“Frankly, I’m surprised (Bombardier) didn’t announce this earlier,” Foley said.
“It’s not uncommon for airplanes to have delays — they also had issues with the CSeries. And I’m not picking just on Bombardier.”
“Look at the Boeing Dreamliner; even battery issues aside, it was several years late. Embraer, a business-jet competitor, is late on its Legacy 450 and 500. I think with the sophistication of aircraft nowadays, delays are not surprising anymore.”
A Bombardier official blamed a former, now-bankrupt supplier for the delay.
The official, who did not want to be named, said that Grob Aerospace, a German firm that specialized in carbon-fibre structures, was scheduled to supply the Learjet 85’s fuselage and other major components.
“Back in the day (in October 2007), when we announced the 85 program (initially called the NXT), Grob was supposed to do the composites, but we took it on when they went bankrupt.”
Bombardier itself now makes the components at its Queretaro factory in Mexico, requiring a steep learning curve.
“It took us longer with the composite technology than we had planned to get to exactly where we wanted to be. We had to do some extra testing. We had to develop that technology along with the aircraft itself, so we had a robust schedule.”
“Unfortunately, it took us a little more than required. But now we feel we have a really, really good flight-test vehicle. Everything else on the plane is stuff we’ve already worked with, so we don’t foresee any problems with, say, the engine, or the electronics or the avionics.”
When the program was launched on Oct. 30, 2007, Bombardier said it had “received in excess of 65 letters of intent for this aircraft.”
Beaudoin would not comment on any orders or commitments the airplane still has more than five years later.
Foley speculated that commitments for the aircraft now may be below the initial 65 letters of intent.
“It’s probably fewer than that now, or else they’d have a good reason to say ‘it’s 100 now.’ That would be a great marketing point. I’m a little skeptical when they’re guarded like that, but all manufacturers seem to come from the same mould. Gulfstream’s G650, their newest, biggest plane, has around 200 orders. But it’s had 200 orders for years and years and years now.”