By Moira Warburton and Allison Lampert
(Reuters) - Canada's Bombardier (TO:BBDb) will hit its 2019 delivery targets for its Global 7500 business jet, as the company redirects manpower from other planes to its flagship corporate aircraft program, an executive said on Wednesday.
The plane and train maker has previously said it expects to deliver 15 to 20 Global 7500s in 2019 but will need to make the lion's share of those deliveries during the last three months of the year, leaving little room for error in execution.
Investors and analysts are closely watching deliveries of the Global 7500 business jet, which lists for $73 million and is a key revenue driver for Bombardier.
Bombardier's strategy of shifting manpower from its Global 5500 and 6500 business jets to the Global 7500 is working and will help the planemaker make guidance by year's end, Chief Operating Officer Paul Sislian said.
"The strategy is that we have highly skilled people on both our product lines," Sislian told Reuters on the sidelines of an event at a Bombardier plant near Toronto.
"What we’re trying to do is leverage the people from one product to the other so we hit our targets for all of them."
Bombardier said in October it had already delivered five of the jets and would need to deliver another 10 to 15 during the last quarter of 2019.
Sislian said workers on Bombardier's Global 5500 and 6500 jets are being trained on the 7500 so the workforce can be shifted around as needed to meet deadlines on the different programs.
Montreal-based Bombardier is in the middle of a broader restructuring, shedding underperforming commercial plane programs to focus on its more profitable business jet and rail units.