Bombardier turns cool on composites for airliners
As studies on Bombardier’s proposed 110- to 130-seat jets progress, all the early talk about extensive use of new high-tech composites in the airframe now

As studies on Bombardier’s proposed 110- to 130-seat jets progress, all the early talk about extensive use of new high-tech composites in the airframe now appears somewhat exaggerated if not a complete misrepresentation. In an interview with AIN, the president of Bombardier’s new aircraft division, former CAE and Boeing executive Gary Scott, seemed hardly convinced that achieving a 20-percent improvement in operating cost over existing models would require a particularly radical new approach to airframe design and manufacturing.

“There isn’t anything in our market space that demands dramatic new technologies to produce an attractive airplane,” said Scott. “With the 7E7, which they want to fly from New York to Singapore, they need an all-composite fuselage, and they need composites to increase the pressure in the cabin to the levels they’re targeting.”