Bombardier wins $616 million CSeries order

LE BOURGET, France/BANGALORE (Reuters) - Canada's Bombardier, the world's third-largest civil aircraft maker, said it won an order for 10 CSeries CS100 planes, worth $616 million at list price -- a third deal within a month, after struggling for a year to find orders for the jet airliner.

Montreal-based Bombardier has been under pressure to announce new orders for its 110- to 145-seater CSeries planes, which are due to enter the market in late-2013 and compete against Boeing Co's 737 and Airbus Industrie's A320.

Monday's deal increases orders for the CSeries family to 113, including 51 CS100s and 62 CS300s, and raises the number of CSeries customers to six, Bombardier said.

An option for an additional 6 planes could take the total value of the deal to $1 billion, the planemaker said at the Paris Air Show.

"A broader base of customers means greater potential for follow-on orders, as well as greater interest from leasing companies," Cameron Doerksen, analyst at National Bank Financial, wrote in a client note.

Bombardier did not say who the buyer was, only that it is a "major network carrier." The airline will be the first to take delivery of the CSeries aircraft -- Bombardier's controversial and expensive move into bigger planes.

Last year, Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar Al-Baker expressed concern over Bombardier's progress on the CSeries jets, especially the development of the plane's engine.

"We have deferred a decision, but it's a good aircraft," he said at the airshow on Monday when asked about the CSeries aircraft.

Class B shares of Bombardier nudged higher, up 0.6 percent at C$7.02 on Monday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Kyle Peterson in Le Bourget and Gowri Jayakumar in Bangalore; Editing by James Regan and Ian Geoghegan)