Bombardier Sees Sales Pace Picking Up After Winning Boeing Suit
Bombardier Sees Sales Pace Picking Up After Winning Boeing Suit
(Bloomberg) -- Bombardier Inc. has regained momentum on sales campaigns with its customers, after a U.S. trade ruling last month blocked a proposed import duty on its planes, removing an uncertainty for a jet it spent $6 billion developing.
“It’s been a big relief for the industry, it’s a great victory for competition, for innovation, for the rule of law,” Colin Bole, senior vice president of Bombardier’s commercial aircraft unit, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television Haslinda Amin Tuesday in Singapore. “We’re seeing very positive momentum from our customers.”
The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled last month that sale of Bombardier’s C Series isn’t harming the American industry, blocking a Commerce Department decision last year to impose duties of almost 300 percent after a complaint by Boeing Co. That has enabled the Canadian company to deliver the aircraft to Delta Air Lines Inc., which ordered at least 75 CS100 planes in 2016.
“It makes a big difference,” Bole said. “We had lot of active campaigns -- some of them were perhaps not as active as they might have been because of the complaint -- and now we’re looking forward to taking them forward.”
Last month, Delta’s Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian said that he hopes to add the C Series to the airline’s fleet by the end of this year.
Before the deal with Delta, Bombardier had struggled to gain a U.S. foothold while production of the single-aisle plane fell more than two years behind schedule and costs ballooned to more than $2 billion over budget.
To contact the reporters on this story: Kyunghee Park in Singapore at kpark3@bloomberg.net, Anurag Kotoky in New Delhi at akotoky@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anand Krishnamoorthy at anandk@bloomberg.net, Sam Nagarajan
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