@Willie
I did mention the Embraer talks in my prior post (2nd para). Frankly, I can't wrap my head around it.
@Torquelink has a good point
Anyway I'm trying to work out some simple numbers. Bombardier made a $3.4 billion investment into the CSeries and for that they need about 300 firm orders at the beginning of commercial service to get through ramp up, etc.
But then they sunk another $2 billion into the program. That's almost a 60% overrun, which simplistically suggests that they also proportionally need 60% additional firm orders (to around 475 total) just for parity.
They're now at 243 which means they actually need more than 230 new firm orders just to get back in healthy state. And that's on top of any possible cancellation from Republic, IFC, etc.
Another way to look at it is from a margin perspective. CS300 lists for $71 million. Again for simplicity lets say they generously make 5% margin off the list price ($3.5 million) and all of the planes they sell are CS300s.
That means the need to sell more than 570 CS300s just to get that additional $2 billion back. That's a staggering amount. To put that in perspective, that's about the size of the entire CRJ 700/900 fleet worldwide, down the drain.
Even if United, JetBlue, Air Canada, etc., all put in large 100 aircraft firm orders each, that still doesn't come close to recouping just this additional $2 billion investment, never mind the original investment, and any new investment they're seeking from partnerships.
So really Bombardier needs to deliver > 2,000 aircraft to make this endeavor worthwhile. Can they? Yes, it's possible.
But I can't see them getting to these numbers by partnering with Embraer, for example. With Airbus at least they can take advantage of that company's massive scale and network.
I know some analysts have called on Bombardier to cancel the CSeries but I don't see how they could at this point. With cancellation costs they'd be left with $10 billion in debt and an aging product line. They're in way too deep.