Bombardier Commercial Aircraft has boosted its sales presence in Oceania with the appointment of a former Airbus executive as its vice president for sales in South-East Asia and Australasia.
François Cognard will have responsibility for Australia and New Zealand in his new role and be based in Singapore. He will report to Bombardier Commercial Aircraft senior vice president for commercial Colin Bole, the company said in a statement on Wednesday (Canadian time).
His most recent role was Airbus vice president and head of sales for Middle East and North Africa based in Dubai.
“François joins our commercial aircraft sales team while we push forward with our transformation plans that will position us for success in key markets around the world as we promote and place our portfolio of Q Series, CRJ Series and C Series aircraft,” Bole said in a statement.
“South Asia and the Asia Pacific region account for almost 15 per cent of Bombardier’s forecasted deliveries for new aircraft in the 60- to 150-seat market over the next 20 years.
“As we aim to increase our proximity to these markets, as well as our agility and focus, François’ leadership will be instrumental in capturing a good portion of these sales opportunities.”
In Australia, QantasLink subsidiary Sunstate operates 31 of Bombardier’s Q400 turboprops. Meanwhile, another QantasLink subsidiary Eastern Australia Airlines operates 16 Q300s on behalf of QantasLink in Australia and under the Jetstar brand in New Zealand. Eastern also flies three Q200 turboprops for QantasLink.
Across the Tasman, Air New Zealand subsidiary Air Nelson flies the 23 50-seat Q300 turboprops on regional domestic routes.
As yet, no carrier from Oceania has ordered the CSeries, a clean-sheet jet aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney’s PW1500G geared turbofan engines that competes for the lower end of the narrowbody market alongside the Embraer E2 and Mitsubishi Regional Jet that entered commercial service with launch customer Swiss in July.
