Jetrader - September/October 2009 - 8

Q&A Ben Boehm VP Commercial Aircraft Programs Bombardier Aerospace INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY MARCO STERK, THE LONGBOW GROUP, LLC Jetrader: How did you get interested in aviation and how did you end up at Bombardier as VP Commercial Aircraft Programs? Ben Boehm: I have been an aviation buff all my life, in one way or another, and I still have a hard time driving straight when I drive by an airport. I went to the Royal Military College, got a degree in aerospace engineering and worked with the Air Force for ﬁve years as the line-maintenance ofﬁcer for what, in the States, people call the P-3 or the Orion Sub Hunter. From there, I went to headquarters and was responsible for anti-submarine warfare ballistics—essentially torpedo drops from airplanes. I then left the armed forces and started with Bombardier as an engineer repairing airplanes for our customers. I got more and more into project management and program management and was involved in Bombardier’s ﬁrst attempt at a 100-seater. When that program stopped, just before 9/11, I was moved into a strategic technology group and worked up for our aerospace ofﬁce in a number of key areas of development. Eventually, I led a small team that got what is today known as the CSeries gang. I ended up in my current position after a two-step process—being hired by Gary Scott when he took over the CSeries program, working as the program director for the CSeries speciﬁcally, and after the launch of the CSeries, Gary asked me if I wanted to be the VP of Commercial Aircraft Programs for all of the commercial aircraft programs, including our CRJ and QSeries aircraft. Here I am, responsible for the management of the program ofﬁces for the turboprop, the regional jets, and the CSeries programs. J: In light of the overall world economic situation, how would you describe the current situation at and near-term outlook for Bombardier? BB: Currently, we are happy with where we are. Obviously nobody in the industry likes the state of the industry right now, but our deliveries are looking strong. We’ve got very few areas of concern as far as our where our backlog stands—we’re conﬁdent with where we’re going forward, and we’re conﬁdent that every one of our customers who has signed on with us needs our airplanes. We don’t have that much risk there. In the near term, naturally, we don’t want this be a long slump, but we do see some starting glimmers of optimism. We realize that customers will always need regional products to feed into their networks. We see the mainline carriers looking at ways to expand their ability to ﬂy more regional jets, and from that standpoint we’re positioned well. We’re seeing a growing demand for large turboprops, and we’ve now got airlines like Continental ﬂying right out of their main hub, Newark, with a turboprop, our Q400 NextGen. As for the next few years, we feel like we’re in a very strong position, and for our overall market forecast for the next 20 years, we’re very bullish. We see a strong need in the next few years for a lot more 70- and 90-seat regional jets. We see a need, longerterm, for even the 90-seat turboprop, which we’ve said publicly a number of times is under study as a brother to the Q400 NextGen. Bigger yet, we still have an extremely strong forecast for the 100- to 149-seat market segment where the CSeries aircraft will fall in nicely in 2013. 8 The ofﬁcial publication of the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading

Jetrader - September/October 2009

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