UK leasing firm's interest lifts Bombardier after engine sputters

[FARNBOROUGH] Bombardier Inc's struggling CSeries jet, absent from the world's biggest aviation expo after an engine blowout, got a vote of confidence from a UK lessor. The planemaker is still looking for orders.

"We would have liked to have an aircraft here, to display it and show it," Bombardier Aerospace president Guy Hachey said on Monday in an interview ahead of yesterday's opening of the Farnborough International Airshow near London. "Unfortunately with the issue on the engine, we're not able to come."

A weekend announcement that Falko Regional Aircraft signed two letters of intent to buy as many as 24 CSeries jets underscored Bombardier's challenge at the Farnborough show. The letters aren't firm orders, and flight trials for a model set to enter service in 2015 are on hold while Montreal-based Bombardier works to prevent a repeat of the May 29 engine fire.