Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. announced a fifth delay in handing over Japan's first locally made passenger jet to airlines and about a 30 percent jump in development costs, raising concerns about winning new orders for the single-aisle plane.
Launch customer ANA Holdings Inc. will get the jet in 2020, two years later than the current estimate, Mitsubishi said in Tokyo on Monday. St. George, Utah-based SkyWest Inc. is the plane's biggest customer. Revision of some electrical configuration to meet certification requirements prompted the latest pushback of the deadline.
The Japanese conglomerate has brought in shinkansen engineers and flown the jets to the U.S. to speed up certification as it attempts to break into the dominance of Brazil's Embraer SA and Canada's Bombardier Inc. in the market for aircraft with fewer than 100 seats. The move is "debilitating" for Mitsubishi, said Saj Ahmad, an analyst at London-based StrategicAero Research.