In a federal court in Seattle, Washington on October 19, Bombardier, the Canadian plane maker, filed a lawsuit against Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation (the aircraft arm of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries), Seattle-based Aerospace Testing Engineering & Certification Inc (AeroTEC) and several former Bombardier employees.
AeroTEC is currently aiding Mitsubishi Aircraft obtain 90-passenger jet certification by regulatory bodies. Bombardier is alleging that a number of their employees who were recruited by Mitsubishi or AeroTEC took confidential documents and data with them which was related to the certification of airplanes in Canada and the United States. Bombardier has requested a preliminary injunction stopping Mitsubishi Aircraft from using any of the information it claims has been taken by former employees who are alleged to have emailed copies of sensitive documents to their private email accounts prior to leaving Bombardier.
While AeroTEC has yet to comment, Mitsubishi Aircraft have openly denied any wrongdoing, calling Bombardier’s allegations “groundless.”
The Mitsubishi Regional Aircraft (MRJ) is the first passenger plane to be built in Japan since the 1960s and the project has been plagued by constant delays. While the initial launch date had been penned in for 2013, it is now anticipated that ANA Holdings, the launch customer, will not receive the first aircraft delivery until 2020.
One of the reasons cited by Mitsubishi Aircraft for delays in the past has been obtaining certification. Bombardier is anxious that the MRJ will be the forerunner to additional jets which will compete directly with what was the Bombardier 110-130-seat CSeries, recently renamed the Airbus A220.
Bombardier said it took it nearly a decade to take its CSeries from concept to commercial flight and that only four companies since 2000 had been able to develop a “clean-sheet” aircraft program approved by regulators in Canada, Europe and the United States.
