Suzanne Shep­pard

A se­nior of­fi­cial of Bom­bardier Inc says the Cana­di­an air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er was not giv­en a fair chance to bid for the con­tract to sup­ply nine tur­bo prop air­craft to Caribbean Air­lines (CAL). Ross Gray, Bom­bardier Com­mer­cial Air­craft's (BCA) di­rec­tor of sales, has writ­ten to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan sug­gest­ing that lack of trans­paren­cy-not air­craft safe­ty-is the ma­jor prob­lem taint­ing CAL's at­tempt to ac­quire nine new air­craft. Ross is con­tend­ing the pro­cure­ment and eval­u­a­tion process­es were flawed and Bom­bardier was treat­ed un­fair­ly.

He fur­ther claims pref­er­en­tial treat­ment was giv­en to the oth­er air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er bid­ding for the project, the French firm Avions de Trans­port Re­gion­al (ATR). "By not run­ning con­cur­rent ne­go­ti­a­tions with ATR and Bom­bardier, CAL like­ly did not achieve the most favourable terms and con­di­tions pos­si­ble," Ross said. A copy of Ross's let­ter to the AG, dat­ed De­cem­ber 21, was leaked to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day. In it Ross said he had been ad­vised by mem­bers of CAL's mid­dle man­age­ment that de­ci­sions on the eval­u­a­tion were "all com­ing from the top down with very lit­tle, if any, trans­paren­cy."

He said no re­quest for pro­pos­als (RFP) was ever is­sued dur­ing the pro­cure­ment process and no ob­jec­tive cri­te­ria was es­tab­lished and com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Bom­bardier about how com­pet­ing of­fers would be eval­u­at­ed. In ad­di­tion, CAL did not give due con­sid­er­a­tion to where the air­craft would be op­er­at­ed and the air­line's jets and tur­bo­props were eval­u­at­ed as sep­a­rate fleets rather than one in­te­grat­ed fleet. Ross spear­head­ed a mar­ket­ing cam­paign to CAL for Q400 tur­bo­prop planes which were be­ing of­fered as re­place­ments for CAL's five Bom­bardier Q300s.

He said he made the first pre­sen­ta­tion to the lo­cal air­line in March 2007. Ac­cord­ing to Ross, up to No­vem­ber 2009 the pace of those dis­cus­sions was very slow and CAL showed very lit­tle in­ter­est in re­plac­ing its Bom­bardier planes. He wrote: "Meet­ings were in­fre­quent and vir­tu­al­ly all the meet­ings were at our own ini­tia­tive-save for a meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2008 which we par­tic­i­pat­ed in which was or­gan­ised at the re­quest of then Prime Min­is­ter (Patrick) Man­ning to dis­cuss the pro­posed ac­qui­si­tion of a Glob­al busi­ness air­craft by CAL for Man­ning's use."

Ross said he was asked by then CAL CEO Phillip Saun­ders to arrange for his Bom­bardier Busi­ness Air­craft coun­ter­part to present an of­fer to CAL and Man­ning. That meet­ing took place at the PM's of­fi­cial res­i­dence.

In No­vem­ber 2009, Bom­bardier is­sued pro­pos­als to CAL for five Q400s and eight CSeries air­craft but nev­er re­ceived a re­sponse. Ross said he vis­it­ed CAL last Jan­u­ary and made a pre­sen­ta­tion to then chair­man Arthur Lok Jack, Cap­tain Ian Brun­ton, who had re­cent­ly been ap­point­ed CEO, and sev­er­al mem­bers of the air­line's man­age­ment.

At that time he heard CAL had en­gaged con­sul­tant Fred­er­ic Mognetti to as­sist in its air­craft eval­u­a­tion for the fleet re­place­ment. He said he lat­er was ad­vised by Cap­tain Brun­ton that CAL was lean­ing to­ward ATR be­cause the man­u­fac­tur­er was of­fer­ing to put a train­ing fa­cil­i­ty and a main­te­nance re­pair fa­cil­i­ty in Trinidad.

He said he al­so was told that CAL was be­ing of­fered ATR72s "at a very low price" and it was felt those air­craft were more eco­nom­i­cal to op­er­ate.

Ross said in ear­ly Au­gust Brun­ton told him CAL had ne­go­ti­at­ed a de­fin­i­tive agree­ment with ATR which would be sub­mit­ted to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er to pro­ceed with an or­der for nine ATR72s. Ross said Bom­bardier sub­se­quent­ly made a "best and fi­nal" of­fer to CAL at a "very ag­gres­sive" price of US$19.7 mil­lion and agreed to sup­port CAL to qual­i­fy as a Bom­bardier Rec­om­mend­ed Ser­vice Fa­cil­i­ty for its Q100/200/300/400 prod­uct lines.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly," he wrote, "we nev­er heard back from CAL." Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the Bom­bardier claims, for­mer CAL chair­man Arthur Lok Jack said no deal was reached with ATR be­fore the board re­signed af­ter the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion. "No deal was reached. The board re­ceived pre­sen­ta­tions from both Bom­badier and ATR but we nev­er reached the stage of a fi­nal se­lec­tion. No ne­go­ti­a­tions over pric­ing took place," he said. Lok Jack not­ed that his board was look­ing to pur­chase five tur­bo­prop air­crafts and not nine as was ap­proved by Cab­i­net.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands the for­mer board was lean­ing to­ward ATR be­cause of its flex­i­bil­i­ty, not its price. This was based on an eval­u­a­tion of both bids, con­duct­ed by for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive Cap­tain Ian Brun­ton. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, who is ex­pect­ed to ad­vise Cab­i­net on the CAL air­craft ac­qui­si­tion is­sue, could not be reached for com­ment on this lat­est de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day.

With re­port­ing by Asha Javeed