Nearly seven years after its commercial launch, the Bombardier CSeries has finally drawn a commitment from its first customer—Lufthansa Group—to place the first of the narrowbodies into service with its Swiss International Air Lines subsidiary in the first half of 2016, Bombardier announced on Thursday.

Participating in the launch of the airplane at the 2008 Farnborough Air Show with a letter of intent covering 60 airplanes, including options on 30, Lufthansa Group signed its firm order for thirty 125-seat CS100s in March 2009. Although at the time it identified Swiss as the intended operator, the airline would not immediately commit to taking the first airplanes.

Apparently pleased by the validation of the program the Swiss commitment suggests, Bombardier CEO Alain Bellamare called the news “a big deal” while answering questions from analysts during his first quarterly earnings conference call since assuming the chief executive’s position from Pierre Beaudoin in February. Bellemare added that the program had reached an “inflection point,” where commercial activity will gain momentum thanks to the wealth of positive data gleaned from more than 1,500 hours of flight testing. Bellamare estimated that the CS100 has now finished between 50- and 60 percent of its total program requirement.  

“We are getting very good performance out of the aircraft,” he said. “The CS100 is flying well, performing great. The CS300’s early performance is excellent. So we feel that we have sufficient data right now to go and talk to airlines about the real potential benefit of the aircraft.”

Citing a need for the new management team at Commercial Aircraft led by president Fred Cromer to “get themselves organized,” Bellemare declined to comment on any immediate sales prospects. “We are going to give them a bit of time to re-energize the sales group,” he said.

“I would say not that long ago clearly schedule was an issue,” added Bellemare in response to a question about a perceived resistance by airlines to immediately commit to new orders. “The multiple delays didn’t help. But, again, we have to look at where we are today...We are at a much different place than we were a year ago.” 

Bellemare reiterated expectations that the program team will complete CS100 testing by the end of the year, some two years later than originally planned.