Bombardier confirmed that the CSeries flight testing will resume with FTV2 in September, following grounding due to a uncontained engine fa...
Bombardier confirmed that the CSeries flight testing will resume with FTV2 in September, following grounding due to a uncontained engine failure on May 29.
Rob Dewar, Vice President, CSeries Program reaffirmed that the Entry Into Service (EIS) will take place as per schedule in the second half of 2015 and there is no slippages due to the three month grounding.
Bombardier said the modified Pratt & Whitney PW1500G engines for the flight test vehicles have successfully completed the testing required for return to flight test and has received full flight clearance approval from the relevant authorities including Transport Canada.
The first set of engines has now been re-installed on FTV 2 and is undergoing ground engine runs.
The failure has been traced to the engine’s oil system. Pratt and Bombardier has finalized a fix that Pratt has incorporated into the engine’s oil lubrication system.
Bombardier said the down-time was utilised to complete additional ground tests, configuration and software upgrades, training for EIS, telemetry and system analysis based on data collected so far and a number of other activities required per the schedule.
Bombardier now has just 10 to 15 month to complete the certification. As of May 29, the test fleet has logged 330 hours of the 2,400 hours of flight tests required for certification. To achieve this, Bombardier would need to reach an average of 160 flight-test hours per month to live up to the 2015 delivery schedule.
