Bombardier announces new fuel-efficient regional jet

Bombardier announced the launch of a new CSeries regional jet on Sunday, saying the "greenest single-aisle aircraft in its class" will be manufactured mostly at the company's Mirabel plant north of Montreal.

The project is expected to create 3,500 jobs.

The manufacturer said the aircraft is designed to be more fuel efficient than other aircraft in its class.

"These game-changing aircraft emit up to 20 per cent less CO2 (carbon dioxide) and up to 50 per cent less NOx (nitrogen oxides), fly four times quieter and deliver dramatic energy savings — up to 20 per cent fuel burn advantage," company officials said.

The CSeries would be in direct competition to similar-sized planes manufactured by Boeing and Europe's Airbus, which have focused on building aircraft that have 150 seats or more.

"The CSeries for us is probably the largest program that Bombardier has launched in its time. We're launching a family of airplanes, both a 110-seat airplane and a 130-seat airplane," CSeries program director Ben Boehm said while attending the prestigious Farnborough Air Show in southern England.

"No one has really built airplanes for the 100- to 149-seat market segment directly," he said. "They've always been shrinks of other airplanes, or stretches of other airplanes."

Analysts have said Bombardier has lined up five potential customers for more than 200 of the new jets. Germany's Lufthansa Airlines has signed a letter of interest to buy up to 60 of the CSeries planes, at nearly $47 million a piece, Bombardier said in a news release.

Production will begin in Belfast and St. Laurent, Que., with the final assembly to be carried out at Bombardier's plant in Mirabel.

The CSeries aircraft are slated for delivery in the latter half of 2013.