Water Bombers (General Topic)

[The Big Gimper]

Canadian Company to Collaborate on New Amphibious Water Bomber

Hynaero, a French company based in Bordeaux, announced this week that it has contracted Montreal-based Altitude Aerospace to assist with the design and engineering of their Fregate-F100 amphibious water bomber, a clean-sheet design that the company touts as a next generations aerial firefighter aircraft.

With a payload of 10 tonnes of water, a cruising speed of 250 knots and an endurance of up to four hours, the company admits it is challenging de Havilland Canada’s CL-415 head-on.

“This agreement represents, in addition to the know-how and experience of Altitude Aerospace, significant financial support and a major step forward for the next phases of our aircraft program,” said Hynaero’s co-founder and president David Pincet.

Altitude Aerospace was founded in 2005 and employees more than 170 engineers in Montreal and at its two branch offices in Toulouse (France) and Portland (Oregon).

“We are delighted to collaborate on this ambitious and innovate new program, which is completely in line with the strategic positioning of the group and, moreover, with our geographical development in France,” Altitude Aerospace Group president Nancy Venneman said.

Hynaero hopes to have the Fregate-F100 take to the skies by 2031.


Source: https://canadianaviator.com/canadian-company-to-collaborate-on-new-amphibious-water-bomber/

[GTX_Admin]

Interesting

[apophenia]

Since this is a 'General Discussion', a size comparison between the CL-215T/415 and Hynaero Fregette-100.

-- https://hynaero.com/en/

This outfit is very small but these guys seem to have some game.

President & Public Affairs is David Pincet. He comes from the Ministère de l´Intérieur where he was director of air operations at the Sécurité Civile. So, plenty of Canadair experience there.

Technical & Industrial Director is Cédric Savineau - based in Bordeau but is either Canadian or spent time in Canada (with the CLI). Things nautical seem to be his major interest ... so, relevant to flying boats.

Sales/marketing guy Christophe Laurent - still also a Sales Director at StandardAero - has a bunch of customer support background. Most recently, that was for the highly relevant Bombardier CL215, CL215T, and 415. Prior experience with Dassault and Embraer. Before that, Laurent was an AVS Tech in the Armée de l'Air.

-- https://www.altitudeaero.com/

Altitude Aerospace is small but seems to have been on a bit of a hiring binge over the last year or so - both engineers and marketing types.

Altitude president and founder is mechanical engineer Nancy Venneman. Prior to 2005, she was at Bombardier on CRJ structural mods engineering. Her father was also a Canadair/Bombardier guy. Not sure who the Dad was but he was said to be involved in the development of the Challenger 600, CRJ 100, and Global 5000.

While Venneman was on CRJs, she encountered Fadi Al-Ahmed whom she later hired as Altitude's VP and chief engineer. Al-Ahmed was at Bombardier (1999-2007) having begun with Canadair Defense Systems (1992-99) on their CF-5 & CF-18 programmes.

The French (Toulouse) side is rather less impressive. Managing Director/CEO is Laetitia Chaynes who is also in insurance and finance (incl. president of a fund management firm). AFAIK, Mme. Chaynes has no prior aerospace connections.

One of the Toulouse-based aerospace engineers was Dany Daoust who became head of Portland, Oregon-based Altitude subsidiary, Altech Aerospace (which laid off its entire workforce during the Covid shut-down but is now rebuilding).