Here is our April flight test update for the three programs among the Western OEMs. Note the hours shown are best estimates and come from third parties who attempting to track the programs.
The program’s added aircraft is helping to build hours rapidly. We maintain an earlier than planned EIS. The flight test program appears to be executed flawlessly.
Boeing added another aircraft to the program. Test program hours are accumulating quickly and EIS seems to be on target.
The additional aircraft is helping to build hours. However hours were impacted by FTV2 being in the Florida-based McKinley Climatic Laboratory and not accumulating any hours while doing so. FTV3 flight time is based on an average of 2h per flight (8 flights for April) due to no radar data available on flightradar24 or FlightAware; which means the hours could be understated.
The two major OEMs continue to execute their programs well and Bombardier appears to be doing better but still looks slow. Bombardier has said the winter impacted their test program and we wait to see a program acceleration now that the worst weather is over. They are supposed to add another test vehicle which should help.
In summary, the tables show how the programs are faring. Bombardier clearly needs to accelerate their program hours. Bombardier has averaged 27 flight test hours per month compared to 152.8 at Boeing and 137.2 at Airbus.
Beyond the statistics, the real question is : Why is the CSeries test program so slow?
Surely, Bombardier, a public company, should explain what difficulties the test program is facing.
Ahh well, no one want to tell, Public or Public traded its all in the black as much as they can manage
Not really fair to compare these 3 programs. Boeing 789 is a variant, and A350 is using mature FBW systems. Cseries is clean sheet with all new codebase for flight systems. I think once they are flying in normal mode, they will start piling on the hours quite quickly. Until then, many tests cannot really be done.
The flight test month accounting graphic appears to be not quite right.
A350 cert is expected for ~Q4 this year. That is about +-6 month away.
mid june 13 to begin of may 14 is 10.5 month ( not 12 ) adding the outstanding
month would add up to ~17 month ( not 24 ) ?
It would be interesting to see the A350 compared to the 787-8, rather than the 9.