Bombardier Firms up India Plane Order

Bombardier Inc. has secured a foothold in the key market of India with the sale of a batch of its Q400 turboprops to discount airline SpiceJet Ltd. SpiceJet has placed a firm order for 15 Q400 NextGen turboprops and has booked options on an additional 15 aircraft, Montreal-based Bombardier said Thursday.

The firm order is valued at about $446-million (U.S.). If all options are exercised, the total value rises to about $915-million. The deal is a breakthrough for Bombardier, which has so far only delivered a small number of regional jets to customers in India but no turboprops.“This is a very important order for us as it establishes the Q400 NextGen airliner in India,” Gary Scott, president of Bombardier Commercial Aircraft, said in a news release.

“We expect India to take delivery of 600 commercial aircraft in the 20- to 149-seat category over the next 20 years, and we believe our optimized Q400 NextGen turboprop, CRJ Series regional jets and al-new C Series aircraft are ideally suited to capture a sizeable portion of those deliveries.” On the rail side, Bombardier already has a strong presence in India with several major contracts.

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