Bombardier sees sales pace picking up

Bloomberg

Bombardier Inc. has regained momentum on sales campaigns with its customers, after a US trade ruling in January 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 in Singapore.
“We’re seeing very positive momentum from our customers.”
The US International Trade Commission ruled in January that sale of Bombardier’s C Series isn’t harming the American industry, blocking a Commerce Department decision in 2017 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 arelooking forward to taking them forward.”
Welcome back to America, C Series! 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 US 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.