Odds and Ends: Preparing market for 3-5 mo delay on CSeries; Air Canada fleet plans

Bombardier: On its earnings call. the company is preparing the market for a 3-5 month delay on the first flight of the CSeries. We’ve been estimating 3-6 months.

Air Canada: Here’s an interesting item. Air Canada is pondering major fleet changes that might see the removal of the Embraer E-190 as too big yet it is considering adding the CRJ-900, which is nominally just a little smaller.

AirAsia X: This LCC for long-haul is adding six Airbus A330s to its fleet, to bring the total to 26 when all aircraft on order are delivered. AirAsiaX considers the airplane ideal for flights of six to eight hours.

100-149 seat market isn’t ‘Bermuda Triangle’ for the right airplanes

A new study released today by AirInsight concludes the oft-maligned 100-149 seat market is viable, and not a ‘Bermuda Triangle,’ if the right airplane is developed to compete within it.

We’re a co-author of the study, Market Analysis of the 100-149 Seat Segment.

Some aerospace consultants, analysts and observers–as well as Boeing’s Randy Tinseth, VP-Marketing–term the segment a Bermuda Triangle because of airplane “failures” in the market. But the fact is that except for Embraer’s E-Jet, the poorly-conceived British Aerospace/Avro Jets and Bombardier’s pending CSeries, there hasn’t been a clean-sheet design since the 1960s. All other aircraft have been derivatives of older designs and offerings of weak and dying manufacturers.

We need to add the Sukhoi Superjet SSJ100 to the clean-sheet design list, but this falls into the weak OEM category.

Today there are six aircraft types and 15 sub-types from five OEMs. (There were seven and 16 until Tuesday, when Boeing finally dropped the 737-600.)

AirInsight has an analysis of the future of the A319/A319neo and 737-700/737-7 Max here.

Here is a run-down.