Bombardier unveiled its revamped Liberty Learjet 75 corporate plane, betting that extra legroom and a lower price tag would help the Canadian company beat back competition from Embraer’s market leading model.

Bombardier and Embraer are both turning to their corporate jet divisions for growth after shedding control of their commercial aviation programmes. “It’s more space, and more performance (than competitors) with similar cost and operating cost,” Mischa Loeffler, manager for product planning at Bombardier Aviation told Reuters at the unveiling of a mock-up model of the plane for the news media. The unveiling came ahead of the world’s largest business jet show, which kicked off on Tuesday.

The soft-selling Learjet, Bombardier’s smallest business aircraft, is now trailing Embraer’s market-leading Phenom line, according to industry data.

Montreal-based Bombardier is expanding its offering of higher-margin, large-cabin business jets, with the launch of the Global 7500, 6500 and 5500 to compete with top-of-the-line models from rivals Gulfstream and France’s Dassault Aviation. In its latest forecast, Honeywell is expecting up to 7,600 new business jet deliveries worth $248 billion from 2020 to 2029, fueled by demand from corporate flight departments and the introduction of new models.

After years of tepid demand, and analyst speculation that the Learjet line was up for sale, Bombardier sees the lower-priced Liberty as a strategy to boost demand in a market dominated by lower-priced jets from Brazil’s Embraer, Textron’s Cessna and Pilatus Aircraft.

According to the latest shipment data from the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA), Embraer delivered 27 Phenoms during the first half of 2019 compared with four Learjet deliveries for Bombardier.

Reuters