The sluggish sales performance of the CS100 and CS300 is officially of no concern to management. “I’m absolutely satisfied with the CSeries orders,” Arcamone noted of the 138 firm orders currently placed for the aircraft family. He added that Bombardier has 66% of the 100- to 149-seat market targeted by the CSeries, which includes Embraer’s 195 twinjet and smaller variants of the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 families.

But some of Bombardier’s existing customers have called on the airframer to become more aggressive in its sales tactics and adapt to mainline practices, such as significant discounting and more extensive performance guarantees like those that helped Airbus book more than 1,400 orders for its A3210NEO family and Boeing more than 1,000 order for its 737MAX. One of those critics is Republic Airways CEO Brian Bedford, although Arcamone says there has been no change in the status of the Republic CSeries order. “Republic is a valued customer of ours; they are very supportive of our program.”

According to Arcamone, lessors also are interested in the program. In terms of the sales strategy, “we are not looking for the one big customer that is ordering 100 aircraft,” he said.