On September 7, the Swiss company RUAG posted on its social network that it was delivering the last tail section of a CRJ jet to Bombardier, which is due to complete the assembly of the remaining 15 orders by the end of the year.
The CRJ (Canadair Regional Jet) family, made up of the CRJ100, 200, 440, 550, 700, 900 and 1000 models, is one of the most successful in commercial aviation since it debuted in 1992. Derived from the Challenger business jet, the series it had more than 1,800 planes ordered in nearly 30 years in production.
Since June, the program has belonged to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which has only taken on support and services to customers, without the right to resume production. The reason for this is clear: the Japanese are more interested in Bombardier’s customer base than in continuing to offer the aircraft, as they are already developing their own family of jets, the SpaceJet.
With the departure of the CRJ, the regional aviation market today has practically one competitor capable of supplying jets with 70 to 100 seats, Embraer, Bombardier’s biggest rival. Despite the fact that a partnership with Boeing was canceled in April, the Brazilian company continues to receive orders for the E-Jet family models, especially the E175, which disputed customers with CRJ in the USA.
In addition to Mitsubishi itself, whose first plane has not yet started operations, Sukhoi with the SSJ-100 is on the market, but which has attracted few interested costumers, and COMAC, which sells the ARJ21, a modernized DC-9 clone, only for Chinese airlines.
Only over 100 seats is there a strong competitor, Airbus with the A220, not by chance an airplane also developed by Bombardier, the former CSeries.
