Bombardier signs American Airlines for up to 70 CRJ900 NextGens
Based on the list price for the CRJ900 NextGen aircraft, the firm order contract is valued at approximately $1.42 billion US and could increase to approximately $3.38 billion US if the 40 options are converted into firm orders.
With this order, American Airlines becomes the first customer to benefit from the latest enhancements to the CRJ900 NextGen regional jet. In addition to the 4% improvement in fuel burn already achieved with the “NextGen” package, enhancements to the aircraft’s powerplant and ongoing weight reduction initiatives, which include upgraded avionics, will offer a further reduction of up to 1.5%. Altogether, this represents a 5.5% fuel burn reduction over the earlier generation CRJ900 aircraft, and up to 5.0% lower fuel burn compared to announced competitive, in-production jets in the same seat class.
“It’s been an exciting week for American Airlines,” said Peter Warlick, vice president, Fleet Planning, American Airlines. “We’ve closed our merger with US Airways Group, Inc. and as we begin the work to harmonise the American and US Airways operations, an agreement like this with Bombardier will greatly improve our ability to optimise our flying with the right aircraft to meet customer demand. This order will allow American to lower costs by replacing older aircraft.”
“We congratulate American Airlines and US Airways on their merger and are delighted that the merged airline will use Bombardier aircraft for its present and future fleet requirements,” said Mike Arcamone, president, Bombardier Commercial Aircraft. “Our ongoing commitment to the technological updates of our product offerings is today realised with value enhancements made to the CRJ900 NextGen aircraft. Over the years we have been successfully driving down operating costs by introducing fuel efficiency improvements and maintenance cost reductions. The product enhancements to the CRJ900 NextGen aircraft offer fuel cost savings of up to $500,000 US per aircraft.”
Including the American Airlines order announced today, Bombardier has recorded firm orders for 1,812 CRJ Series aircraft, including 339 CRJ900 and CRJ900 NextGen aircraft. Worldwide, CRJ Series aircraft are in service with more than 60 airlines and more than 30 customers operate corporate variants of the aircraft. The aircraft are operating in over 50 countries on six continents, and on average, a CRJ aircraft takes off every 10 seconds somewhere in the world. CRJ Series aircraft have transported more than 1.4 billion passengers and have logged more than 38 million flight hours and over 32 million takeoffs and landings.
