Hopefully Delta and Bombardier will work together to cobble together a mutually-beneficial deal. Who knows - some people are saying the bigger CS300 could be used as a potential MD88 replacement....
Now, given that we are all pilots and not the bean counters or negotiators, I wanted to share a snippet from an interesting article related to the C-Series FBW design and the use of the sidesticks which is different from the traditional Airbus FBW. It sounds like Bombardier spent a lot of time interviewing and working with pilots to create a pilot-friendly cockpit. See below:
(Excerpt from this Aviation Week article:
Bombardier To Staff: Help Design CSeries Flight Deck | AWIN content from Aviation Week):
With the autopilot turned off, the attributes of the modified C* (C-star) FBW design quickly become clear. While a basic C* FBW blends g force and pitch rate to control the pitch axis, Bombardier modified the control system to be speed-stable, meaning that it attempts to maintain a speed set by the pilot using the trim switches at the top of the sidestick. The commanded speed shows up as a speed “bug,” or pointer, on the speed tape in the PFD. The energy-based control design mimics the basics of how pilots learn to fly: Set the desired power level and hold the correct pitch of the nose with the elevator to capture a target speed, taking out the pressure on the control yoke with the elevator trim control. When trimmed out, the aircraft will attempt to maintain that speed despite changes in power. If the power is greater than needed, the aircraft will climb, and vice versa, but the speed will attempt to remain constant. “It's much more intuitive and flies much more like a conventional aircraft,” says Dewar. “Compared to the Airbus FBW, where you trim to an attitude and it holds it, here you trim to an airspeed.”
Additionally, this is a good look at the flight deck for both the CS100 and the bigger CS300 (basically the same advanced cockpit you would find in the latest Global Express bizjet) from one of the test pilots:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndEtYyMbSY8