Bombardier Exits A220 Program Leaving Airbus with 75%

Photo: Graham Cornall / shutterstock.com

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Bombardier has announced that it exits the A220 program, former CSeries, and leaves Airbus with 75% ownership, with the remaining 25% held by the Canadian government’s Investissement Quebec.

According to the agreement for the Airbus Canada Limited Partnership (Airbus Canada), the Canada’s stake will be redeemable to Airbus starting 2026, this is three years later than the initially agreed for 2023.

“With this transaction, Bombardier will receive a consideration of $591M from Airbus, net of adjustments, of which $531M was received at closing and $60M to be paid over the 2020-21 period”, Bombardier said in a statement. With this move Bombardier “completes its strategic exit from commercial aerospace”.

Notably, under the terms of the revised agreement with the immediate effect, over 3,300 jobs in Quebec will be secured.

“I am proud that our government was able to reach this agreement. We have succeeded in protecting paying jobs and the exceptional expertise developed in Québec, despite the major challenges we faced in this regard when we took office”, Bombardier added.

Since entering the partnership for the A220 program on 1 July, 2018, Airbus succeeded in increasing the number of net orders by 64% to 658 aircraft, as of end of January, 2020. This way, in January, 2020, 107 A220 aircraft were flying with seven customers on four continents.