After several years at a standstill, Canadair will relaunch its production line

At the International Air Show in Farnborough, in the suburbs of London, Tuesday, July 19, it was a long time since the chalet of the aircraft manufacturer De Havilland had not known such a crowd. It must be said that the Canadian group, a subsidiary of the Longview investment fund, is the manufacturer of the famous Canadair. Water bombers today in great demand as fires rage around the world and especially in France, where they have already burned more than 20,000 hectares.

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Camped in the middle of the stand with his Quebec lumberjack stature, Jean-Philippe Côté, vice-president of the De Havilland Canada program, is smiling: business is picking up. The one who was “one of the very first Canadian aviation companies”as the leader proudly recalls, had been almost at a standstill for many years. “It has been almost ten years since a Canadair has been sold or delivered”, he says. But that era is now over. After “eighteen months of discussions”, underlines the vice-president, six countries of the European Union – France, Greece, Italy, Croatia, Spain and Portugal – have ordered twenty-two water bombers. A group contract which was not primarily intended to lower the price of seaplanes, but which was added to the six copies previously retained by Indonesia.

This order book, finally quite substantial, led the aircraft manufacturer to decide at the end of March “the restart of the production line” of its newest child, the Canadair DHC 515. Indeed, these few years of guaranteed production were the prerequisite for De Havilland to give the green light to “a major investment” the amount of which, however, he refuses to specify. Catalog price, the DHC 515 is invoiced approximately 35 million dollars (35 million euros).

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First deliveries “from 2026”

Contrary to what seems to have been envisaged originally, the new aircraft will not replace but rather reinforce the twelve older generation Canadairs that make up the French fleet of water bombers. This one is not of the first youth. More than two-thirds of seaplanes have been in service for more than twenty-five years. This is not a cause for concern, however, underlines the Canadian aircraft manufacturer. Of the 220 Canadairs produced since their launch in 1969, says Mr. Côté, “160 remain in service, half of which are operated in Europe and the other half in North America”. It must be said that, since the 1970s, the various owners of the Canadair have regularly re-engined the “Firefighter”, the fire fighter.

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