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“We lose money on every sale, but we make it up in volume.” It’s an old joke, except at Bombardier where it’s a business model.

The aircraft manufacturer timed its latest quarterly loss report — $138 million in the first three months of this year, on revenues of $3.9 billion — to coincide with the announcement of the sale of 75 of its CSeries passenger jets to Delta Air Lines. The deal was hailed as a “turning point,” a “watershed,” and, inevitably, a “game-changer,” and why not: it’s nearly a third as many as the company has been able to sell since the CSeries was launched, more than a decade ago.

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Quite what has changed, however, remains a matter of conjecture. If the company has lately had greater success selling the plane than before, it may have less to do with the quality of the plane than the price. Though widely reported to be worth $5.6 billion, or roughly $72 million apiece, the Delta deal is in fact worth a fraction of that sum, which is based on the plane’s list price.