The fourth Bombardier CSeries flight test vehicle (FTV4) has made its first flight from the company’s Mirabel facility near Montreal.
The flight comes just four days after the aircraft received its Transport Canada flight test permit, and lasted nearly three hours. During the flight, the aircraft reached an altitude of 41,000 feet and an airspeed of 300kts.
FTV4 will join its three sister aircraft on the CSeries flight test campaign, and will focus on performance testing of the aircraft. A fifth CS100 will join the test fleet soon, as well as two examples of the stretched CS300.
The CSeries marketing effort has taken a hit in recent days, with US regional carrier Republic announcing at the RAA convention in St Louis that it would delay its order for 40 aircraft, and Air Canada saying it would not be replacing its fleet of Embraer E-jets with the CSeries.
