Marwan Lahoud, head of strategy at the European aerospace group EADS, on Sunday said he did not rule out forging links with companies in the Middle East. “It would be silly from our side to exclude any of the options of this kind,” he told an EADS seminar at the weekend organized ahead of the Farnborough International Air Show, which opens Monday. “They are investors, they are customers. They are willing to grow local industry. So all this is good for us, providing we find the right deal,” Lahoud said when questioned about the possibility of link-ups with Middle East companies. Last November Lahoud indicated that EADS and one of the chief investment funds in the Middle East, Mubadala, based in Abu Dhabi, were in talks to manufacture plane parts in the rich emirate. He told the Gulf News at the time that the talks were about carbon fiber, which he described as one of the key elements in the future of civil aviation. Meanwhile, Bombardier formally launched a new 110-130 seat airliner, the CSeries, on Sunday in a bid to challenge Airbus and Boeing in one of their core markets. Announcing the long-awaited launch on the eve of the Farnborough air show, the Canadian company said it had selected Mirabel near Montreal as the site to assemble the planes, which will enter service in 2013. Mirabel had been competing with Kansas City, Missouri. Launch customer Lufthansa has provisionally ordered 30 planes with an option for 30 more, Bombardier said in a news release. The CSeries will sell for $46.7 million each. The aircraft marks a branching out from Bombardier's current lines of regional jets and turboprops, which hold up to 100 or 80 passengers respectively.
