Bombardier Debuts the Continental, Pledges Quicker Global Completions

Bombardier staged a gala fly-in of its new Continental here Tuesday, and is targeting 30% of a super-midsize market it pegs at nearly 1,300 jets over the next ten years.

For its flagship Global Express, Bombardier is pledging to speed deliveries to customers.

The $14.675 million Continental made its maiden flight on August 14.

Green deliveries of the 3,000-nautical mile, .80-Mach aircraft are to commence late next year following third-quarter 2002 certification.

Continental service entry is planned for June 2003. "The first two years are booked," Bombardier product development VP Charbel Bachaalani told Show News.

The Continental will outperform the Citation X, Falcon 50EX and Gulfstream 200 (the former Galaxy) in terms of performance and interior space, yet will be considerably cheaper, Bombardier says.

Bombardier is predicting a direct operating cost of about $940 per hour for the Continental, which it says is more in line with midsize aircraft than super-mids. "We looked at the Lear 45 and the Challenger and we got the best out of both," Bachaalani says.

Continental's interior is being developed by DeCrane, which will supply componentry for Bombardier completions to be done in Tucson. Bombardier intends to certify the Continental interior concurrently with the flight test regime. To further save time, five aircraft will be committed to the certification program instead of the usual four, Bachaalani says. The aircraft is to be JAA-certified too, and Bombardier has demanded that its key suppliers follow the same time-saving certification regime.

Principal among them is Honeywell, which is furnishing the Continental's 6,500-pounds-thrust, AS907 engines, which share a common core with the engines for the now defunct BAE Systems Avro and RJX 80 and 100 aircraft. Honeywell is responsible for the new jet's GKN Westland nacelles and Hurel-Dubois thrust-reversers, as well as the engine itself. Honeywell is also supplying the Continental's APU.

The new aircraft will be fitted with the Rockwell Collins Pro Line 21 avionics suite, and all avionics options, including redundant distance measuring equipment, satcom, weather radar with turbulence detector, and 3-D moving maps, will be certified in line with the basic aircraft's timetable. "We give the customer what he wants up front," Bachaalani says.
Bombardier is meanwhile speeding Global Express deliveries at the same time that a series of aircraft performance enhancements are certified, most of them available as free modifications to the more than three dozen Globals already in service.

Bombardier has vowed to make it easier for customers who buy its largest aircraft by giving them a single point of contact from contract-signing to delivery. "Customer relationship managers" now handle communications between customers and Bombardier sales, engineering, completion and other staff.

Bombardier's flagship Global Express is a 6,000-nautical-mile, $41.7 million airplane that's in fierce, head-butting competition with the U.S.-built Gulfstream V.

Bombardier has lined up four outside completion partners for the Global and has targeted 35 weeks-down from today's 42-from the time of "green" aircraft delivery from its

Toronto-Downsview assembly line to in-service availability.

"We had underestimated the task when we set out to do the completions," says Global Express product manager Marc Bouliane. "We had underestimated by far the technical complexity of certifying an aircraft in this category."

Enhancements to the Global include Performance Enhancement Program aerodynamic mods that improve overall range by about 100 nautical miles, to better than 6,000-without the further gain that may be gleaned from a pending engine nozzle redesign by Rolls, Bouliane told Show News. PEP will be part of all new Globals, and available as a free retrofit package to all existing aircraft.

One new Global Express customer is Bombardier itself, which will bring the Global Express into its Flexjet fractional ownership program by year-end.

By Rich Piellisch