Airbus's surprise move to swallow Bombardier's CSeries airplane program gives it a new small-jet family without spending the billions of dollars it would take to develop one itself.

Besides the likely impact of the deal on the Boeing-instigated U.S. trade case against Bombardier, that leg up for Airbus could trigger a serious strategy shift for Boeing.

The deal Airbus announced Monday, giving it control of Bombardier's freshly introduced two-model family of small narrowbody jets — the 110-seat CS100 and the 130-seat CS300, — could ultimately force Boeing to redraw the road map of new airplane development that it had settled on.

Boeing has said it doesn't expect to have to field a so-called "clean-sheet" new-technology design to replace the Renton-built 737 narrowbody until around 2030.Yet Ernie Arvai, president of AirInsight Group, an aviation industry consulting firm, said that if Airbus chooses to produce a stretched CSeries jet — a potential 150-seat CS500 — it would hurt sales of the 162-seat 737 MAX 8, the heart of Boeing's narrowbody jet lineup and the narrowbody plane from which it expects to derive most revenue.

With such a threat, Boeing might need to spend billions on a 737 replacement sooner than expected.

"It probably pushes it two to three years earlier than Boeing had originally planned," said Arvai. Conversely, with the CSeries in hand, "Airbus may not need a new-technology narrowbody jet just as desperately."Indeed, Airbus's move to secure the small narrowbody market should free it to focus its money and resources on countering Boeing's pending plan for a new 797 airplane that's sized between its 737 and 787 jet families.

For that project, Airbus may find useful the innovative composites manufacturing technology that Bombardier developed for the CSeries in its wing plant in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

There, in a very different composites layup technique (see video above) from that used by Airbus and Boeing ...

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