[synthos]

> Many Canadian aerospace engineers have never forgiven the government for dismantling Avro Canada’s CF-105 Arrow, a billion-dollar project that, on October 4, 1957—the same day that Russia sent the world’s first satellite into orbit—rolled out the fastest supersonic jet the world had ever seen.

Not just aerospace engineers, but if you ask just about any Canadian and we're all still super sour about this.

[908B64B197]

It's probably a great thing for Canada that the Avro project was shut down. The real tragedy was the CSeries/Airbus A220.

The Avro was a cool paper project (it is ultimately unknown if it could even achieve the projected performance since no flights were performed anywhere close to the claimed speeds or with real hardware). The Avro didn't serve any purpose, it was rendered obsolete by ICBMs and 50's soviet technology. The plane was made to intercept a nuclear supersonic soviet bomber that... never materialized! The soviets and Americans went all-in with ICBMs, rendering bombers pretty much obsolete (by Sputnik launch it became obvious nuclear payloads would be delivered with ballistic missiles). Would have been a costly, useless plane.

The A220 was a complete airliner project with a production line and $52 billion dollars worth of firm orders as of 2020. When the Trump administration slapped tariffs on it Trudeau immediately bowed down, despite the tariffs later being thrown out in courts. All he did was to basically threaten to not buy Boeing fighter jets and instead get f35 from Lockheed (which he was contractually obligated to anyways). No support for the industry, nothing. And that was for a flagship prestige technological project.

All he had to do was to be a little bit more assertive and make a capital injection at the right time. Bombardier was swimming in orders, it was guaranteed that the project was going to make money at this point (plane was even certified by the FAA by then).

I still don't understand why he reacted so submissively to Trump. Having the CSeries sold to Airbus at a huge discount was foolish: The plane already had a profitable amount of orders. Canadians paid for the R&D, Europeans and Americans are now reaping the benefits.

While there was very little the Canadian government could do to save the Arrow, other than maybe building it as a training aircraft, it was 100% possible for the Government to save Bombardier and the A220 program. I wonder if the fact that the company is headquartered in Quebec made it politically impossible...

[KuiN]

For more context on how big a deal this is, the A220 is quite widely seen as the future of short-haul aviation. Airlines are moving towards a point-to-point model instead of hub & spoke (especially in Europe), using smaller planes with lower capacity, but flying more frequently, together with best in class fuel efficiency (with the price of jet fuel only really going to go in one direction in the next decades) means the 220 is very, very popular. Airbus is expecting to sell 7,000 of them in the next 20 years. That's coming close to the incredibly successful A320 family (including A318, A319, A320 and A321 models) which has sold just over 10,000 planes since 1986.

[igrekel]

Sold to Airbus? It was practically given to Airbus with the initial controlling stake sold for 1$ because it was bleeding money.

But yes, that 300% tariff was bullshit and I'm sure its effect didn't pan out the way it was expected.

[skylanh]

My first comment on this site was about Bombardier.

Bombardier went into high-risk, high-reward territory, and failed:

1) project they'd never done before

2) technology they'd never used to build and model

3) highly integrated supply-chain with large number of partners delivering large sub-components that had to integrate with other large sub-components

4) pre-planned delivery dates to customers, and still had at least two delivery slips

5) "bet the farm"

Additionally, the C-suite was comprised of nepotistic family connections--who may have been fully qualified, or may have only achieved their role due to the family ownership.

Political conjecture aside, this is a engineering and business failure.

[b112]

The Avro was a cool paper project (it is ultimately unknown if it could even achieve the projected performance since no flights were performed anywhere close to the claimed speeds or with real hardware).

I think this is missing the point. Avro Arrow was a single design, but it was first in many respects. Shutting it down ended not just what the Arrow could have been, but the entire future of what Avro's future could have been.

The engines alone were spectacular. The concentration of talent was impressive. 1/2 of Avro (it is often said) went to work for NASA. We had that talent, and bam, gone.

Mostly because the US wanted its industries to sell planes to Canada instead.

[MegaDeKay]

You are correct. The Arrow in fact had a long list of problems: it was extremely difficult to fly, it guzzled fuel so had limited range, it was fast as hell but had very limited maneuverability, etc. I know someone that put a lot of research into the decision, and as massive a fan of the Arrow that he was, he came to the conclusion that its cancellation was the right call in the end.

[philocatterham]

Genuine question: do you believe that the immediate bow to Trump's tariffs had anything to do with the context of the `Two Michaels` and attempting to gain favour with the US amidst the political tension that Canada was in with China at the time?

[908B64B197]

At the time it was puzzling to me why Trudeau was so submissive regarding China. He bowed down to the CCP and wasn't able to secure the `Two Michaels` release. In retrospect, that might have been because of the double allegiances the Trudeau cabinet held toward China [0] [1].

He did a great job for Boeing's shareholders (me included) and the CCP. Just, not for the Canadian public it seems!

[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/9658738/trudeau-foundation-china-...

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65054559