Field service to NL Govt to manufacture damaged surface bomber. | So Good News

Canada’s De Havilland Aircraft is floating some options to the government of Newfoundland and Labrador regarding the fate of a water bomber that crashed more than four years ago.

The plane has been grounded since an accident in 2018, and its future has been up in the air ever since.

“We want to use it as our flight test vehicle,” Neil Sweeney, the company’s vice-president of corporate affairs, told CBC News.

“We want to fly one of these planes or the other as quickly as possible so that we can develop a new generation of water bombers.”

Canada’s De Havilland Aircraft is producing the DHC-515 Firefighter, a new water bomber based on the CL-415 used in Newfoundland and Labrador’s fleet.

The company wants to use the CL-415 from the ground here to test fly new components as part of the process to get the DHC-515 certified by Transport Canada.

“We are interested in talking with the government of Newfoundland and Labrador about getting this aircraft back into service,” Sweeney said.

Officials speculated again that the county had plans to sell it until this year’s record wildfires.

Earlier this month, Transport Minister Elvis Loveless told CBC News they were reassessing their options and could decide instead to repair the plane and get it back into service.

The state water bomber is down to four planes since the accident.

The government can no longer turn to insurance for repairs. That’s the same as the previously estimated repair bill in the crash, as the deductible rises to $10 million.

“We think further discussion is warranted on what to do with this Unit No. 5,” Loveless said recently.

Those internal discussions could take between six months and a year, Loveless reported.

Sweeney said the company has been in talks with the state since the crash in 2018, and he hopes the local government review will open the door to speeding up those talks.

can buy Repaired and leased Or he said he could simply fix it.

In 2016, Viking Air acquired the rights to the CL-415 water bomber program from Bombardier.

Viking was renamed De Havilland Aircraft of Canada. The company now owns all De Havilland aircraft and the Canadair program.

This spring, Canada’s De Havilland Aircraft announced that European customers had signed an order of intent to purchase 22 DHC-515 aircraft, with the first scheduled for delivery in 2026.

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador.