Nacional visited the Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier Aerospace, third in the world by the number of aircraft it produces, right behind Airbus and Boeing. We had an exclusive opportunity to visit the production line where the first two turboprop Dash-8 Q400 aircraft for Croatia airlines are in the production phase. Croatia's national air carrier this summer decided to purchase the two aircraft on an operative loan and replace the existing ATR fleet with the 78-seat Canadian aircraft. A total of four such planes have been ordered with an option to buy two more. The aircraft are manufactured some twenty kilometres from downtown Toronto, right next to Downsview airport, owned by Bombardier and used by the company to test the aircraft it manufactures. They are currently assembling the first airplane for Croatia Airlines, number 4205, with delivery expected in early May 2008.

The fuselage of the airplane has already been connected to the cabin and the connection of the wiring is almost complete. Still to be attached are the wings, the vertical stabiliser and similar items before the start of the sensitive work on the cockpit and the painting. Only the cabin of the second aircraft, to be delivered a month later, has been constructed so far, and bears the designation 4211. With Nacional's reporter in the production line was director of production Peter Woods, who showed us the Q400 aircraft being built for Croatia Airlines. Woods told us that the Downsview airport area has been a well-known centre of the aircraft industry since back in 1928, founded by Britain's de Havilland who manufactured the Moth aircraft on which Canadian pilots were trained. In the 1980s, the Canadian government privatised the company, which was purchased by the US company Boeing, and in 1992 Bombardier bought it from Boeing.

Over an area of 394 hectares of land there are about 150 thousand square metres under a single roof, says Woods, housing the production lines for final assembly and the production of structural components of the Learjet 45, Global, CRJ and Q series of turboprop aircraft. Since it was difficult to maintain contact with workers over such a large area, Bombardier Aerospace introduced the PopWare’s mobile network, as the heads of individual production sectors were overly occupied with administrative tasks and could not spend much time with employees.

With this system, supervision is significantly more effective. Using the software the heads of individual production sectors can communicate with employees at all times, access work schedules and phases, check delays and see whether quotas are being met, which parts are needed for installation and the like, as workers also enter all of their tasks and jobs in the computer program. This has significantly reduced the need to fill out various kinds of paperwork, forms and the loss of effective work time walking from one end of the factory to the other, which can take up to 40 minutes in both directions.

Everybody in the production area is obliged to wear protective eyewear and uniforms and to walk in strictly defined pedestrian zones to make way for the many forklifts and small delivery vehicles there. Entry to the production halls is not permitted even to all employees, as each wears an electronic pass with various types of clearance, and it is evident then that Nacional's journalist had to be accompanied by the director of production who is the only person authorised to enter any part of the production area.

Downsview airport is the site of the production lines for 37 to 90-seat aircraft of the Dash-8 series, the Q200, Q300 and Q400, and the Canadian Regional Jet, i.e. the CRJ-200, 700, 900 and 1000. In addition to producing the new aircraft for Croatia, this facility is the second largest base for training Croatian pilots and mechanics, second only to Zagreb airport. A dozen are currently receiving training for the Q400 airplane. We joined them at a hotel some ten kilometres away where pilot crews and mechanics from around the world are lodged when they come for training at Bombardier Aerospace. The 11th floor, known as "Flight Safety" is always reserved for aircraft personnel with a bus waiting every morning at 7:20 in front of the hotel to take them to the company, i.e. to Downsview airport, where newly manufactured aircraft take off for over a hundred countries around the world.

At the headquarters of Bombardier Aerospace Regional Aircrafts, a part of the Bombardier Aerospace group, Nacional's reporter was received by the vice president of the department responsible for market analysis and marketing, Barry MacKinnon, who presented the company in numbers, focusing in particular on the Q400, the best selling turboprop aircraft in the world, which made its success thanks to the fact that it was introduced in 2000, just ahead of the significant hikes in fuel prices, and because it is the quietest turboprop aircraft. Bombardier's experts managed to reduce propeller noise levels down to that felt when flying jet airplanes. When it comes to the aircraft from the Q series, where Q stands for "quiet", 932 aircraft had been ordered to date, of which 825 have been delivered for 112 buyers.

The advantage of the Q400 on short flights in comparison to aircraft of the same capacity but using jet propulsion, is that its annual costs are up to 34 percent less, or US0,000 per month. 7 passengers less on one flight in comparison to a jet aircraft of the same seating capacity is sufficient to make it profitable, and there can be as many as 2,000 passengers less a month with the company still turning a profit. Since all operators will soon have to implement standards of environmental acceptability, the Q400 brings companies further savings, as less noise means fewer fees at airports, fuel costs are reduced, and there will be reduced fees because of a reduction in the emission of harmful substances into the atmosphere, Barry Mackinnon told us.

In response to a question about the competition among turboprop aircraft on the global market, he responded, "If we compare the sales of the competing ATR-42 and 72 aircraft with sales of the Dash, the Q series, as of 31 October 2007, the ratio was 53 percent to 47 percent in favour of Bombardier. We were very pleasantly surprised by the news last year that Croatia Airlines would purchase our Q400 aircraft, especially as that is the first company in the world that has switched from an ATR fleet to Bombardier and because your country is in south-eastern Europe, a future target market for us."

A question that could not be avoided concerns the maintenance of the Q400 aircraft in Europe, as Britain has the only service centre, and growing sales in Europe have led to serious considerations on setting up a second centre. "The top people at Bombardier are considering the possibility, but there is no definite decision as of yet on where that will be done. If you ask me about Croatia, we know of the impressive results of the technical personnel at Croatia Airlines in maintenance of the Airbus aircraft, especially since it has won the trust of the German air carrier Lufthansa, which is by no means insignificant. I hear that business is growing, so it is clear that the clients are happy with maintenance service in Croatia. We will certainly have that in mind."

The Q400 is not the only thing that links Croatia and the Canadian company Bombardier Aerospace, as ties were established much earlier on account of the Canadair fire-fighting aircraft, also manufactured by Bombardier Aerospace. There is not a single country in the world of Croatia's size that will in two year's time have as large a fleet of aircraft from the Canadian manufacturer. Added to this are a dozen Bell helicopters in Croatia, also manufactured in Canada, although not by Bombardier.

Croatia currently has four fire-fighting aircraft of the Canadair type, and two more have been ordered, scheduled for delivery in 2009, for a total of six. The national air carrier Croatia Airlines last summer decided to purchase four Q400 commercial passenger aircraft on operative loan, and if everything goes according to plan, it is likely to order another two, for a total of six. The Croatian Government's airplane, a Challenger 604, is also manufactured by Bombardier Aerospace.

When we left for Canada, one of our priority goals, along with a tour of the Q400 production facilities, was certainly a visit to the Canadair fire-fighting airplane production line. We planned to visit North Bay, but the people at Bombardier told us that there was little to see there besides already assembled Canadairs, as North Bay is the site only of final processing prior to departure for the buyer's country. They suggested the much more interesting possibility of visiting the factory in Dorval near Montreal, because it is there that production of the aircraft starts, which in the first phases of production looks more like some kind of sheet metal boat. The visit to Dorval depended on the prevailing weather conditions that day, as snowstorms were forecast in Canada.

We only received confirmation of the flight for Dorval and a visit to the Canadair factory on the morning of Wednesday, 6 February, just prior to the scheduled take off time. A Bombardier Q200 airplane flies for Montreal two times a day and returns as many times for Toronto. Costs for the company are significantly lower as employees, for the most part directors and heads of departments, are sent on business to the Bombardier headquarters in Montreal on a company plane rather than by commercial flight. A company flight significantly reduces arrival and departure times, because the Q200 lands and takes off 100 metres from the headquarters of the company in Montreal and Toronto, so there is no need for check in.

Because of reduced visibility and low-lying cloud cover over Downsview airport, which is not rated for take off in all weather conditions, we were transferred by taxi from the factory in Toronto to Pearson International Airport, i.e. the part of it reserved for the quick transfer of general aviation passengers used by Bombardier. The flight to Montreal lasted somewhat over an hour in the 32-seat aircraft, half the seating capacity of the type being purchased by Croatia Airlines, but with the same noise reduction technology. The noise from the propeller, in comparison with all turboprop aircraft on which I have flown, was significantly less here. The only exception was a Q400 aircraft owned by Tyrolean Airlines on which I flew a little more than half a year ago, where the noise and vibration was significant, to which the other journalists on the flight drew my attention. The company pilot of the Q200 on the flight to Montreal told me that the noise and vibration of turboprop aircraft are caused by the turning of the propeller, i.e. the creation of pulses of air that hit the aircraft's fuselage, which is passed on to the passenger cabin.

The cabin in Q series aircraft has microphones distributed along the entire length of the passenger area that record the noise level and passes that information on to a computer in the aircraft that also has data on the speed of the propeller.

The computer continuously analyses vibration and the data it is receiving, and also analyses signals that come from devices integrated into the aircraft's fuselage that send counter-vibrations towards the source in order to significantly reduce them. It is evident, says the pilot, that the vibration and noise on the Tyrolean Airways flight was the result of a lack of calibration of the components of the system responsible for reducing the level of noise. At Montreal's Dorval airport, the administrative centre of Bombardier Aerospace, and the site of production of the CRJ passenger aircraft, the Global Express long range business jet, the Canadair and the Challenger, we were awaited by representatives of Bombardier's PR department who drove us to the 15 minutes distant Canadair production centre.

During the short trip, I mentioned some unusual and for them surprising information on who flies Canadairs in Croatia and how, that Croatian Canadair pilots are military pilots who fly MIGs throughout the year and Canadairs in the summer. Croatia will this year also get the first woman to pilot a Canadair in the world, Captain Dijana Doboš. The information was interesting for their marketing department and they hope to interview Dijana Doboš for the magazine they regularly send to their clients. At the production hall, we learned that five Canadair aircraft are produced a year and that the manufacture of one lasts eight months. Canadairs for Italy recently left the factory, and the next ones are for Spain. So far 73 aircraft of that type have been manufactured or ordered, targeted exclusively to fire-fighting. Over recent years it has evolved into a multipurpose aircraft that, besides putting out fires, is financially an incomparably better solution for search and rescue over bodies of water and in the war on poaching and organised crime at sea – the Canadair Cl-415MP.

We learned of all the newest details, radar in the nose of the aircraft, autopilot and computerised flight processing, additional space for 13 passengers along with the two crew members, and another development is that the Canadair, if necessary, can draw out the water tanks. A door has been made through which injured persons can be brought into the aircraft, they can be used for parachuting and so on. It all depends on what the buyer actually wants to use the Canadair for. As he could not receive us because of business engagements, the Bombardier president for amphibian aircraft production Michel Bourgeois called us by phone a day ahead of our arrival in Dorval in the afternoon for a short interview on the Canadairs for Croatia. He said he plans to come to Croatia in March and that he is following the situation concerning the Aeronautics Technical Institute in Velika Gorica. He feels that the entry of the Institute on the open market is a very good move on the part of Croatian Government and expects that will happen in the near future and that this would be paralleled by the certification of employees for aircraft maintenance. Bourgeois said that the Aeronautics Technical Institute could in fact become the regional centre for the maintenance of Canadair aircraft that the countries of south-eastern Europe would acquire over the coming years.

He confirmed that the production of Canadairs had been suspended, but not discontinued in 2001, because there were already several completed Canadairs, but nobody was buying them. The machines and tools in the hall had been covered in protective tarps in expectation of new orders, which is what happened. Bourgeois announced the start of production of the Canadairs for Croatia very soon. For the coming season, two Canadairs will be rented out to Croatia by another operator, not necessarily Italy's Sorem.

In the coalition agreement of this Croatian Government, in the section that covers airborne traffic, one of the strategic goals put forward is the "need to capitalise on the professional potential of Croatia Airlines and the Aeronautics Technical Institute and to develop aircraft maintenance activities in Croatia for foreign operators." And while it was not explicitly stated with which foreign company this activity would be developed, it is quite clear that Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier Aerospace is in question.

After the visit and talks with top people at Bombardier, it is clear that there is a great opportunity for lucrative and quality business with Croatia, something the Canadians also underline, especially with the technical sector at Croatia Airlines and with the Aeronautics Technical Institute in Velika Gorica. However, it all depends on who from Government will negotiate with the Canadians and how soon they will decouple the Institute from the military system and assist it in acquiring a certificate to enter the open market. Otherwise, if Government is seen as uncommitted and inert and lacking the will to negotiate, similar ventures will very quickly move somewhere to the east of Croatia.