Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Canada-based aircraft manufacturing company Bombardier recently signed an agreement with the state government to supply its modern mid-size jet plane ‘Challenger 3500’. A senior officer of the Canadian aviation company was here in the State capital on Saturday to sign the agreement.
Sharing the details, a senior officer of the aviation department said Bombardier Company will supply ‘Challenger 3500’ to the state within the stipulated time of 20 months. The cost of jet will be over Rs 235 crores. As of now, the state does not have its own (functional) plane. Its lone plane Beechcraft Super King Air B 200 GT Aircraft, VT-MPQ suffered serious damage while having a hard landing at Gwalior airport in 2021.
Since then it is stationed at Gwalior airport. To sell it in scrap, the department has decided to hire a company to evaluate the cost of damages of the aircraft. In this regard, it had floated technical proposal and financial proposal in May but as of now the things are at snail’s pace. It is learnt that no company has shown interest so far.
Bid date for chopper extended yet again
The government has extended the bid date to buy a new twin- engine helicopter for the third time, said sources in the aviation department. This has been done on the request of the helicopter manufacturing companies as they need more time to prepare the documents. It is learnt that two French companies Airbus are showing keen interest to sell their modern chopper to Madhya Pradesh. To buy modern the helicopter, the government had fixed July 26 as the last date to submit the bid. Later this last date was extended to August 22. Now once again, the deadline has been extended.
