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Bombardier saw a huge amount of unfilled demand — its latest forecast still sees a market of 7,000 planes in that segment over the next 20 years. It also saw Boeing and Airbus distracted by new, long-range jet programs like the 787 Dreamliner and the A350. It leaped at its chance.

It started with a brief press release in early 2004 announcing that it had hired Scott, a former Boeing executive, to “evaluate the possibility of proceeding with the creation of a new-generation commercial aircraft.” It would come to be called CSeries — the C stood for “competitive, continental, connector.”

In Scott’s mind, the CSeries was going to be to Bombardier what the 747 was to Boeing in the 1960s: high risk, but, in the end, transformative.

“It damn near took them (Boeing) down; Boeing almost went bankrupt back in the late ’60s because of the 747 program and the fact that the industry took a dive at that time,” Scott says. “But they came through that as the true leader in commercial aircraft.”

By the end of 2005, Scott had taken his project from one employee to 600. The result: plans for “an airplane that was probably 10 per cent better than anything that existed in the market,” he says.

Ten per cent wasn’t good enough. In 2006 Bombardier shelved the project and shrunk Scott’s division to a skeleton staff of 50 while it waited for the right technology to catch up with his vision.

Scott was staying in close touch with Pratt & Whitney, which was developing a new, more fuel-efficient engine technology, known as a high-bypass geared turbofan. It had been in the works for years but was still untested. As the engine came closer to reality, the vision for the CSeries came into focus — an aircraft that would use the new engine technology, along with lightweight composite materials, to significantly reduce fuel and operating costs.