The first one was called Phoenix. Long before it was the A220, before it had a number or even a single passenger, it was a flight test vehicle. Its namesake was a tribute to the aircraft being given a second life. The team rebuilt it, and it rose, as the name implies, from the ashes.
Alongside Phoenix, a series of seven prototypes with evocative names distinguished themselves, such as the intrepid Black Sheep (the second test aircraft) and the first CS300 in the lineup, Lucky Sevens. Each played an essential role throughout a decade of rigorous testing aimed at preparing the aircraft for its global entry into service and continuously improving it.
The idea was simple to state and audacious to attempt: build a single-aisle aircraft from a clean sheet of paper, and build it better than anything in its class. This is the story of that bet: of the people who placed it, and of the aircraft it became.
How a bet on a clean-sheet aircraft began in Mirabel, Canada
The idea was older than the aircraft. Before the A220, and before the C Series, there was an earlier Bombardier concept called BRJX, a vision that arrived before its moment and was set aside. But it never quite went away. It returned, reimagined in Mirabel, Canada, with even sharper ambition: to build the most efficient small single-aisle aircraft on the market, with every part designed to serve that singular goal. (....)