CSeries still slated to enter service in 2015
Bombardier insists airliner will meet its target following series of mishaps during testing
Despite last month’s turbine failure on Bombardier Inc.’s CSeries, which grounded the fleet of test vehicles, the airliner now in development will meet its 2015 target of entry into service with airlines, the company says.
Bombardier Aerospace spokesman Marc Duchesne said Friday that “we’re working hard with Pratt to settle the root cause so we can get back in the air as soon as possible. There is an enormous pressure on the Pratt team, as there is on the CSeries team.”
Despite the contretemps, the plane will be available to airlines by the second half of 2015, he said.
The full, official explanation by Pratt & Whitney will go a long way to determine the gravity of the problem. But until then, rampant — even wild — speculation is de rigueur.
Will the May 29 engine-turbine failure in ground testing at Mirabel be just another of the many bumps in the road, par for the course for a new-technology airliner in development? Or does it presage bigger issues for the already delayed aircraft?
Could the problem be more serious than generally assumed, given that there was another, less talkedabout, incident only weeks earlier? In that April 29 episode, a Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan (GTF), the engine the CSeries will use, was embedded on a test aircraft and suffered a mishap on takeoff at Mirabel, forcing the Pratt & Whitney B747 test plane and its crew of 14 to land — safely. Airport officials called it a fire, but Pratt and Bombardier officials said there is no proof a fire occurred.
The four CSeries flight-test aircraft were grounded until further notice after the May 29 incident.
Most aviation specialists say that such problems are normal, even routine.
“That’s why these things are tested for thousands and thousands of hours on the ground,” said Will Alibrandi, an aircraft engine analyst with Forecast International of Newtown, Conn.
“If you’re going to have an engine failure, you want it to happen during development testing, not after certification.”
The good news, Alibrandi added, is that the “uncontained failure” in the turbine that also damaged one of the Bombardier’s prototype CSeries flight-test vehicles, did not originate in the engine core — the unique newtechnology gearbox that is designed to provide the CSeries with big savings on fuel consumption. That’s the CSeries’ biggest selling point, and a fundamental engine problem requiring a wholesale rethink could have been catastrophic for Bombardier — and Pratt.
But reassurances from the company and many others have not quelled the rumour mill. Perhaps the most provocative one came from one Montreal aerospace executive, president of a successful and fast-growing firm that works with the world’s major aircraft-makers. He told The Gazette recently that “many people in the industry know that these problems don’t date from yesterday. It’s not the first fire.”
People close to the flight-test program have told him that “the problem is the stop-and-go. A plane lands, turns off the engine, passengers get off, others get on and you go. This sequence is not working well with their engine. It’s like they always have to keep in movement — always ready to take off, like a plane on an aircraft carrier.”
The executive then unloaded a bombshell: He has heard from several knowledgeable sources, he said, that Bombardier and General Electric Co. have talked seriously about GE replacing Pratt & Whitney as its engine supplier.
“GE is working very, very hard to
“Pratt’s engine is the right engine for that aircraft.” MARC DUCHESNE, SPOKESMAN,
BOMBARDIER AEROSPACE
supplant Pratt as the supplier,” the executive said.
“There are jobs posted internally for a program that would replace Pratt’s GTF. GE engineers are already working on that.”
Those rumours, however, were met with a chorus of incredulity and scorn by analysts — and by GE.
Deb Case, spokeswoman for GE Aviation in Cincinnati, said that “we haven’t been asked by Bombardier.” “Unthinkable,” Alibrandi said. Not least of the problems with those whispers is that GE does not make an engine that would suit the CSeries.
The second obvious obstacle is that the CSeries itself was designed largely around Pratt & Whitney’s GTF. Both are untested technologies and their fortunes are intertwined to a large extent.
“I just don’t believe it,” said Scott Hamilton of Leeham Co. LLC of Seattle. “Beyond the fact that GE doesn’t have an engine in that category and that the plane’s been designed around the GTF, it would push the whole program back years.”
Richard Aboulafia, a consultant with Teal Group of Fairfax, Va., said in an email that “I too find it outlandish.”
“Conceivably, (Bombardier) may have asked for a smaller LEAP (GE’s own new-technology engine under development) to be developed, but I doubt it would be possible in time (or that GE would do it),” he added.
“I doubt (Bombardier) would do that, and if they did, heaven help them.”
The latest program setback pushed the CSeries’ entry into service to the second half of 2015, a more significant delay than most aviation people had expected.
Bombardier spokesman Duchesne called the question about replacing the CSeries engine supplier at this late date “surprising, to say the least.”
“Pratt’s engine is the right engine for that aircraft. So, um, no.”
The 2015 entry-into-service target will be met, he reiterated.
Neither Duchesne nor Pratt & Whitney spokesman Ray Hernandez could say when the definitive root causes of the engine fire and its fixes might be announced.
“Pratt probably has a team working on a fix 24/7,” Alibrandi said.
Hernandez said in an email that after a thorough examination of the failed engine, the company found that “a slight design modification would allow for continued ground testing.”
But it isn’t known what, precisely, that entails, and whether further modifications are necessary to resume flight testing.
One source, who declined to be named, said Bombardier will announce soon that it will resume the CSeries’ test flights within days.