CSeries: Once Was Lost, Now is Found

(MoneyWatch)  In case you missed it, Lufthansa today confirmed its long-anticipated launch order for Bombardier's CSeries jets, with a firm order for 30 of them.

The deal was given a list price of US $1.53 billion, but it's far more likely the actual price was right around $1 billion. The planes will be operated by Swiss Interanational Air Lines, a Lufthansa subsidiary.

You may recall we were just talking about this last week, after go-to aerospace industry analyst Richard Aboulafia at the Teal Group noted in his monthly newsletter that it had been eight months since Lufthansa had signed a "letter of interest" for the Canadian jet-builders new planes, and the German airline still hadn't finalized the deal, leading him to think that it might be dead. At the same time, however, an analyst in Toronto was telling my friends at Business News Network that the order was in the offing.

With this launch order in hand, Bombardier is set to go forward with two CSeries jets (a 110-seat C100 and 130-seat C300) that will be big enough to challenge the smaller versions of Boeing's 737 and Airbus's A320, which are their top-selling airliners. Bombardier says it will have its CSeries planes ready for service in 2013. Bombardier won't take its first planes till 2014, suggesting that somebody else could get them first -- like Qatar Airways, perhaps.

The move also will play a role in how Boeing and Airbus go forward with their planes to replace their top-selling single aisle jets. for its part, Boeing has studied incorporating technology from its new 787 jets into a smaller 737 replacement, but says that wouldn't give enough of an upgrade to justify doing a whole new airplane. Instead, it's now expected to come to market with a "refreshed" 737 sometime in the next few years, while aiming for a built-from-scratch replacement sometime around 2020.