Lengthening the maintenance intervals is intended to trim direct maintenance costs, one of the key outgoings for an airline. This will follow an improvement in the A check interval to 800 flying hours introduced in 2017. The CRJ has Ka-band and Ku-band connectivity and in-cabin content streaming.Ī change Bombardier will introduce to the CRJ later this year is an extended C check maintenance interval, up to 8,000 flying hours. Passengers have high expectations around IFE&C, because they are used to having connectivity when they’re out and about on the ground. While less of an issue for regional aircraft than it is for longer-range aircraft operating long-duration flights, in-flight entertainment and connectivity (IFE&C) is nevertheless important for all manufacturers. LED mood lighting is also standard, having previously only being an option at the aftermarket stage for customers who wanted it. Guay said Bombardier took inspiration from the car industry, smoothing out the lines in the cabin walls and redesigning the seats to improve sight lines. Bombardier says the CRJ is the only regional aircraft so equipped.Īnother objective with Atmosphere is to improve the feel of the cabin for passengers by making it brighter and airier. The bins offer 40% more space and enable 50% more bags to be carried, Bombardier says.Ītmosphere also introduces a redesigned forward lavatory, offering 60% more space than previously and designed to improve accessibility for passengers with reduced mobility. Consequently, Bombardier has redesigned the entrance area in the forward cabin and introduced wider seats (20in/508mm in business class, 17.3in/439mm in economy) and larger overhead baggage bins designed to handle rolling bags sized up to 23 x 16 x 10.5in (584 x 406 x 266mm) wheels first. The thing that came out was the interior.”Ī key finding was a desire from airlines for increased space in the cabin. Jean-Francois Guay, the director of the CRJ programme at Bombardier Commercial Aircraft, told AIR International the stimulus for introducing Atmosphere was a roadshow in 2015: “We surveyed the market to understand what they’d like to improve or what, if they were planning to buy a CRJ, they’d like to see. The first aircraft featuring the revamped interior will be delivered to its customer, currently undisclosed, in the second half of 2018. This year Bombardier will introduce a major cabin upgrade for the CRJ called Atmosphere. The C Series is Bombardier’s flagship airliner programme today, but with the CRJ such an established product it is unsurprising the company maintains a large commitment to its regional jet range and continues to invest in the three current-production models, the 66-78-seat CRJ700, the 76-90- seat CRJ900 and the 97-104-seat CRJ1000, and support the older out-of-production CRJ100, CRJ200 and CRJ440 variants. The company says a CRJ takes off or lands every five seconds and there are more than 200,000 flights with the type every month. Since launching the CRJ in 1987, the Canadian company has sold 1,918 examples of the regional jet family, of which 1,876 had been delivered by December 31, 2017, the latest date for which figures are available. The Bombardier CRJ is one of the most popular commercial airliners ever made only the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 programmes have sold more. "The debate over the CRJ was whether it would last two years or five," he said.īombardier stumbled badly earlier this decade with an attempt to challenge Airbus and Boeing by developing a 100- to 130-seat jet, the CSeries, that almost bankrupted the company.ĬEO Alain Bellemare, who came aboard in 2015, has sold off assets and raised new debt and equity to pare Bombardier’s heavy debt load, aiming to slim the company down to its strongholds in business jets and trains.All photos Bombardier Commercial Aircraft Scope clauses are what's kept a trickle of orders coming in, said Aboulafia. Bombardier has sold 1,950 CRJs, but sales slowed in the early 2000s as oil prices climbed and airline consolidation shrank route networks.īombardier refreshed the CRJ in recent years with a new cabin design, but its 1970s-vintage General Electric engines are inefficient by modern standards, and it’s not clear if the plane could be retrofitted with newer ones. airlines snapped up the CRJ to replace propeller-driven planes on short-haul routes serving smaller cities. Bombardier created the regional jet market in 1989 when it launched the CRJ, which was a stretched, 50-seat version of the Challenger business jet that it had acquired a few years prior when it first got into aerospace by buying the struggling aircraft maker Canadair from the Canadian government. The deal marks the exit of Montreal-based Bombardier from commercial aviation, and the probable end of the line for a landmark aircraft.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |