Winging It: The Making of the Canadair Challenger

By Stewart Logie

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771591454
• ISBN13: 9780771591457
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Macmillan of Canada
• Length: 267 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 1.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Canadair Before Bombardier

This book tells the story of the Canadair Challenger, a true marvel of civil aviation that is still in production 30 years after certification. It starts with a brief history of Canadair, but the rest of the book concerns itself strictly with the saga of developing the aircraft. From a technical point of view the book is fairly accurate and will satisfy the aerospace professional without frightening the layperson. The author surely would have been a very good teacher, for his explanations of complex technical issues are crystal clear and made simple to understand even for the average reader. But where this book really shines is when dealing with the different characters involved with the design and production of the Challenger. I believe everyone received here an honest and fair treatment. In all circumstances the author shows great respect for the individuals he talks about. That translates into tactful descriptions of people, the way they were and how they behaved, without undue bashing, nor any complacent flattering either. Another interesting aspect dwelled upon in this book is the business side of the project. It is revealed to us how the project was managed and how money was spent. We come to understand how Canadair was dealing with the government and how it was conducting business with it's various customers. You will be fascinated to learn what was really going on behind the scenes while many of us were simultaneously following the story as it was unfolding in the newspapers or trade magazines of the time. We learn what important decisions had to be made at various stages of development of the aircraft. Decisions that fortunately or unfortunately we still live with today. For many of those decisions had lasting, and sometimes irreversible, consequences. Overall what makes this book so satisfying is the balance it strikes between those various aspects of the endeavor. The business side, the human side and the technical side are all treated with equal importance. But above all, it is the now historical nature of the book that makes it so valuable some eighteen years or so after it was first published. We have to keep in mind that if it was not for the enduring success of the Challenger there would probably be no aerospace industry to speak of in Canada today. And what transpires when reading this book is just how close we were from creating another disgrace like the termination of the Avro CF-105 project. But instead of another fallen Arrow, we have inherited a thoroughbred around which an entire family of derivatives was created. A triumphant survivor that no longer satisfies itself of challenging the business aircraft world. For it now also threatens the giants of the commercial aircraft industry like Boeing and Airbus with it's latest offspring: the C-Series. What we have here is an entirely new generation of aircraft that will carry the torch of the Challenger far into the future and make it burn bright with it's defying spirit

Best (only) history of the Canadair Challenger

The only semi-complete story available detailing the history of the Canadair Challenger business jet. A gold mine of facts and figures.