Good day for Bombardier CSeries!

It was a good day for the Bombardier CSeries yesterday (Feb. 20th).

The PW1500G, P&W’s first Geared Turbo Fan, was certified by Transport Canada. As the development of a complete new engine is always a risk, now one major risk on the whole CSeries program isn’t one anymore. It is also good news for Embraer, planning to use the same engine with slight changes to the externals  dubbed as PW1900G, for the upcoming and still-to-launch E190G2 and E195G2. Embraer can now bank on an engine that is proven in service for a few years when the G2 EJets enter service. That might have been one reason to choose the GTF over the NG34 and LEAP engines from GE and CFM.

But back to the Bombardier CSeries. The aircraft program got also a major commercial boost yesterday, when Ilyushin Finance signed a firm order for 32 CS300 plus 10 options. The original LoI called for 3 CS100 and 7 CS300 with ten options and ten purchase rights, so Ilyushin Finance upped their original commitment substantially.

Now the whole aerospace world is waiting for the first flight of the CSeries (and as well for the first flight of the A350 and London bookmakers are taking bets who is first).

Later today there will be  the conference call for results of the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended Dec. 31^st. Maybe we will hear more on the progress of the program.

ICAO's new noise and CO2 regulations a miss!

The International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO’s) Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP) proudly tells us that they achieved agreements  for future CO2  and noise regulations. Nothing particular is said about the CO2 standards, although they were already heavily criticized by Dimitro Simos, author of the Aircraft Performance Software PIANO when a draft of the plan was outlined in mid 2012.

Media hype about B787 test flights

The recent media hype about the test flight(s) now allowed for narrowing the cause of the two battery incidents of the Japan Air Lines and ANA B787 is quite funny in one way. On the other side, it is a little bit sad to see that so many articles are out there in the (written) press and in the Internet and that people find it important to twitter from starting the engines from landing (God thanks!) safely again - as if now every minute the aircraft could come down because every battery could fail every minute. This coverage is not just a little bit exaggerated - it's a hype. The same people could easily comment every minute that an A380 that did not get the wing fix yet is still up in the air...
The problem for Boeing is not to keep the B787 in the air during the test flights - the problem is how to come out of the dilemma: how do they want to make FAA 1000% certain that the aircraft and the battery is safe without changing the design of the battery and surroundings or changing to another battery type. At the end there are just those two options, I guess. And then there are the "How long will it take..." questions:

• How long will that take to get the new design or a new battery?
• How long will it take to get hardware to put it into one of the test aircraft?
• And how long will it take to recertify the aircraft with that?
• How long will it take to ramp up production for the new hardware?
• How long will it take to incorporate the change into the 50 aircraft that are delivered?
• How long will it take to change the aircraft that are now ready for delivery but are waiting for the fix?
• How long and how many aircraft on the production line have to wait to get the new hardware?

I think that from those questions it gets immediately clear that Boeing has a serious problem in getting the B787 to customers waiting for the aircraft - it won't be just a few weeks that deliveries will restart.