Bombardier Inc. (BBDb.TO) is well-positioned to benefit from its CSeries partnership with Airbus, despite its rivals teaming up, according to a McGill business professor.

“Airbus and Bombardier are going to go out there selling the CSeries, selling the CRJs... I think they have a nice window of opportunity of 18 months to presumably slam the window on the fingers of their key competitors,” Karl Moore, McGill business strategy professor and longtime Bombardier observer, told BNN Bloomberg in an interview Thursday.

Moore referred to upcoming Brazilian elections that could present an opportunity for Bombardier and Airbus to get a head start in the 100-150 seat capacity plane market.

“There’s an election, as I recall, in November. So, the new government might be left-leaning, as we saw in Mexico recently, [and] it may take a different tact on it,” Moore said.

Boeing Co (BA.N) announced a US$4.75 billion joint venture with Brazil’s Embraer SA (ERJ.N) on Thursday, which will see the U.S. planemaker own 80 per cent of Embraer’s commercial plane and services business.

Moore called the Boeing-Embraer pact a “natural competitive response” to the CSeries. Airbus struck a deal with Bombardier to acquire a majority stake in the CSeries aircraft last October without any upfront investment. The deal closed on July 1.

“This seems like a natural competitive response of Boeing connecting with Embraer, which is Bombardier’s great rival, Airbus being Boeing’s great rival,” Moore said. “They’re also both concerned about the rise of the Chinese, the Russians and the Japanese, perhaps coming over and taking over the regional jet marketplace.”

While Boeing and Embraer have just announced their joint plans, Moore says the alliance between Bombardier and Airbus seems like “a genuine partnership.”

“They want to work with Bombardier … perhaps being more of a supplier throughout the whole Airbus supply chain. And, it’s something that seems like a genuine partnership,” Moore said.

“They can also bring [the CSeries] into the family where it will probably be renamed, similar to the 737 or the Airbus 210, 220, something like that, so it can be part of the Airbus family and have a future and potentially grow within that family, possibly.”

Moore says the Bombardier-Airbus partnership will allow the Montreal-based company to benefit from Airbus’ global reach.

“They have suppliers that they can squeeze the supply chain by saying: ‘We’re going to buy similar parts for our Airbus planes [as we are] for the CSeries. Give us a better deal,’” Moore said.

“They can get better prices out of that. They bring that strong relationship to the suppliers and the big numbers they buy.”