Why Bombardier is struggling to build bigger planes

Nearly a decade in, the C Series program has yet to gain traction and the company is in tatters. At stake is the survival of a 73-year-old plane and train maker that employs 24,000 people in Canada and contributes $4.7b to the Quebec economy alone. How the grand strategy of one of Canada’s most storied manufacturers lost so much altitude is a tale of misreading the determination of its competitors, falling in love with its own product and failing to grasp the way sales momentum is built in introducing a new plane. Bad timing hurt, too. A series of interviews with former Bombardier executives reveals that the planemaker found itself completely unprepared for how swiftly its larger rivals would be able to launch their own re-engined narrow-body aircraft and how aggressively they would use those planes to defend their turf. <br/>