Airbus, Quebec reach $1.2b investment deal for A220 jet program

Airbus and Quebec on Friday said they have agreed to a $1.2b investment deal that would allow the Canadian province to remain in the loss-making A220 jet program until the venture is likely to turn profitable. Airbus would invest $900m, while Quebec would put $300m into the program, according to a statement from the province's government. The investment would help the A220 program globally to support an increase in production, Benoit Schultz, CE of Airbus' Canadian unit, told a press briefing. The A220 is built both at an Airbus plant in the Montreal area and at the Mobile facility in Alabama. The A220, previously known as the CSeries, is a 110- to 130-seater aircraft, a little smaller than Airbus’s mainstay A320 jet. Reuters reported on the deal earlier, citing sources. The province has faced criticism for repeated investments in the program. Airbus CE Guillaume Faury said the program should be profitable by the middle of the decade. Faury told reporters that COVID-19 weighed on cost-cutting efforts because it impeded production increases. "We need volume to have these savings," he said. Quebec Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon said the A220 program has promise to turn the corner and generates key jobs for the province, Canada's aerospace hub. The deal would help maintain the equivalent of 2,500 jobs. The deal would defer by four years the period when Airbus buys out Quebec's 25% stake in the small jetliner from 2026 to 2030, and Fitzgibbon said that could be advantageous. "At that time we're going to have a fair market value assessment and I'm very hopeful we're going to make money and recuperate the original investment," he said.<br/>