Story ID: GPcseriesFAAEASA06162016
Bombardier CS100 Gains FAA, EASA Approval
By: Gregory Polek
Caption: First C Series cleared for delivery to Swiss
Word Count: 266
The Bombardier CS100 on Wednesday received validation of its Canadian type certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the European Aviation Safety Agency, clearing the first C Series variant for delivery to launch customer Swiss International Airlines late this month and entry into service of the first of its 30 CS100s on order on July 15. The milestone comes the same week the program’s five flying test aircraft surpassed 5,000 hours in the air.

“Obtaining the CS100 aircraft type validations from EASA and the FAA marks one of the final chapters in our very successful test program,” said François Caza, Bombardier Commercial Aircraft vice president of product development and head of Bombardier’s design approval organization. “Achieving these latest milestones is a direct result of the quality of the work by our highly skilled employees who were involved in the program as well as from the solid collaboration we established with our suppliers.”

Schedules call for the first flight to take off from Zurich at 12:30 p.m. on a scheduled service to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Along with Paris, cities served by Swiss’s CS100 in July will include Manchester, Prague and Budapest, followed by Warsaw and Brussels at the end of August, and by Nice, Stuttgart, Hanover, Milan, Florence and Bucharest in September. Plans call for replacement of Avro RJ100s with the C Series on several more destinations as the new twinjets arrive, said Swiss. The airline expects to serve its Zurich-London City with the C Series starting in the first quarter of 2017.