After a two-year delay, Bombardier’s C Series single-aisle jet, purpose-built for the 100- to 150-seat market, will enter service this Friday with launch customer Swiss International Airlines. Based on a demo flight Bombardier (Chalet C3) hosted here yesterday aboard FTV5, a fully configured CS100 flight-test aircraft, passengers should welcome its addition to the commercial fleet. To avoid any confusion, FTV5 is in Swiss livery but Swiss is due to bring its first aircraft here too, to park it on the static display.
“We have the widest cabin in the [single-aisle] market, the widest seats, the widest aisle, and the largest [overhead] bins,” said Rob Dewar, vice-president, C Series program, ticking off some of the selling points of the CS100 and CS300 during the one-hour flight out over the Isle of Wight.
Even on a grey, drizzly morning, the cabin felt open and not cramped upon boarding, a feeling that persisted once we were seated.
The windows are 50 percent larger than an Airbus A320’s and 26 percent larger than a Boeing 737’s, and are positioned higher up on the fuselage—no need to bend your neck or hunch down to look out of the window.
CSeries seats, at 19 inches, have a one-inch width advantage over Airbus and two inches over Boeing. Meanwhile, the five-abreast configuration (three on the right, two on the left) means that at 80 percent load factor, an airline standard for evaluating aircraft economics, every passenger could have either a window or aisle seat. Bombardier added an extra inch to the middle seat on the right side, taking a bit of the sting out of being relegated to the interior position.
Under the command of captain Esteban Arias and first officer Daniel Dion, acceleration and climb on takeoff were impressive. “That was our London City departure,” Fred Cromer, president, Bombardier Commercial Aircraft, announced over the intercom—alluding to the London airport accessible only to aircraft that meet steep climb and descent performance profiles, as does the C Series (The type will need to go through specific performance testing at the airport to satisfy the CAA). Cromer noted that in a 42-seat, all business-class configuration, a CS100 could fly from London City Airport to New York non-stop.
During the flight, with the CS100’s 20-inch aisles, passengers were able to pass by a standard serving cart during service, and doubtless passengers seated on aisles aboard these aircraft will have less concern about carts colliding with overhanging limbs.
Given the roomy cockpit, pilots will likely enjoy the experience, as well. The C Series uses the Rockwell Collins Pro Line Fusion flight deck found in many advanced business jets—its first application in the commercial market—which provides HUDs (Head Up Displays) for both pilot positions.
The forward and aft lavatories were also more spacious and less cluttered than competitors’, and dispense with the usual credenza-like structure anchoring the sink.
Throughout the flight the cabin sound level was impressively low. (I didn’t hear the thrust reversers on the landing rollout, though they were deployed.)
During the flight, Cromer called service entry “another milestone” in what he acknowledges is a long road ahead. But with recent large orders from Delta Airlines and Air Canada, and the planned certification later this year of the CS300, he said the program is now “exactly where we want to be.”
Meanwhile, attendees can tour the interior of Swiss’s first CS100 here on the static display (at Outdoor Exhibit 26), before it reports for passenger-hauling duty on Friday.
