The Comac ARJ21 regional jet program announced another delay with the manufacturer now targeting an in service date of April or May 2015. This will be eight years later than originally scheduled and 13 years after development of the aircraft program started.
First delivery to Chengdu Airlines, the launch customer, will be in late 2014 or early 2015 according to reports and interviews with the airline with actual first service not expected before April or May 2015.
Last August, Comac indicated that first aircraft delivery was due in June of 2013. In 2002, first delivery was in 2006, but that soon moved to 2007 and the program’s delays have continued.
The ARJ21 has recently had a landing gear redesign due to the aircraft’s landing weight being higher than expected and there was a needed redesign of the aircraft’s mainplane when it failed a load test.
Comac announced several milestones including the completion of the first two ARJ21s for Chengdu Airlines in late December and that cold weather testing had been completed. Also, a test aircraft had completed high-speed flight testing..
Bombardier Aerospace announced on January 21st, 2014 that the company would layoff 1,700 employees to contain costs after stretching out CSeries development by at least 12 months and having aircraft orders decline in 2013. The company indicated that it would layoff 1,100 employees in Canada and 600 in the United States. Bombardier has 38,350 employees worldwide. The last round of layoffs occurred in 2007 during a financial crisis which found the company stopping new program development for one year. Following this event, the CSeries program was launched and Bombardier started hiring again.
Bombardier announced on January 16, 2014 that Al Qahtani Aviation Company signed a firm purchase agreement for 16 CS300 aircraft with options for an additional 10 CS300 aircraft. The aircraft will be operated by SaudiGulf Airlines, a newly launched national carrier which will serve the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.