First Made-in-China Commercial Jet Is a Success. So Much So It’s Poised to Beat Airbus and Boeing

• The C919 is the first commercial aircraft produced in China, and more than 1,000 units are said to have been ordered.

• The next step will be to build larger aircraft and produce our own key components.

After a whirlwind production process, China unveiled its new C919 in June 2023. It is a narrow-body commercial jet (with a single central aisle), and its first flight between Shanghai and Beijing was the culmination of more than a decade of work. It is an aircraft built to international standards, so China’s intention is to gain a foothold in a market dominated by giants like Boeing and Airbus.

And the move is going so well, at least on its home turf, that not only are airlines ordering hundreds of C919s, but China is working on a second generation: the wide-body C939.

Achievement. The C919 was manufactured by the Commercial Aviation Corporation of China (COMAC), a state-owned company that they proudly point out on their website is “the first jet-type passenger aircraft independently developed by China that meets intellectual property rights and international airworthiness standards.” It’s a good thing they specified “aircraft type,” because the same company already had the ARJ21, a “small” turbofan model for regional flights.

As for the aircraft, it is designed to compete with the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737, is 38.9 meters long, 11.95 meters high and has a capacity of 158 to 192 passengers, depending on the seat configuration. Its range is 4,075 to 5,555 kilometers.

Made in China (with Western parts). But “made in China” is a relative term, because the company’s problem is that many of the key parts and components are Western. The engines, to name a few, are French. The flight control system, weather radar, and control panel, among other components, are American. They also have British and German systems, although part of the fuselage and the structure itself are made in China.

Success. COMAC’s production was estimated at 150 aircraft per year for five years, but the company said it had received more than 1,200 orders for the C919. There are those who noted that most of these were “letters of intent” from domestic customers, but a year later, it appears the plane has been a success. Air China was one of the last to place an order for 100 units (worth about $11 billion), and COMAC has begun expanding its capacity to handle the orders.

The company’s intentions were revealed last May, when the China Aviation Planning and Design Institute Group confirmed that COMAC had won the bid for the second phase of its C919 construction project. It will be located in Shanghai, where COMAC is headquartered, and will cover an area of ​​330,000 square meters. AVIC-CAPDI said the project will “meet the future mass production needs of the C919 large airliner, improving its production efficiency and providing strong support for the commercial operation and market competition of domestically produced large aircraft.”

excessive ambition. The C919 is a source of pride for China, so much so that the country will seek certification from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and is already selling the model in Southeast Asia. But plans go further. As we can read in the South China Morning Post, the Asian giant is looking to gain a foothold in the international market to take market share away from the two big dominant companies.

With a second assembly line, they’ll be able to build each unit faster, and they’re already hoping to surpass the United States in the 2030s or 2040s. They have extremely ambitious plans, but the goal is to compete with not just one model, but three.

Widebody C939 and C929. After the success of this model, China and Russia began the development of the C929, a wide-body (twin-aisle) aircraft. However, after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Russians gradually pulled out of the project, followed by international sanctions. SCMP sources note that China took this as a blow, but not as something that could stop the project.

“Russia’s withdrawal has some impact, but we can cope with it. Work on the C929 continues and is progressing smoothly, leveraging the expertise and systems coordination we already have for the design and development of the C919. The time it takes to build and develop it could be similar,” the source points out. However, this won’t be COMAC’s only widebody, as they are also working on the C939 to compete with larger Airbus and Boeing jets. The bad news is that we don’t have details on either…

The plan is to make it more “Made in China”. The effort China is making to get its “home-grown” line of commercial aircraft is remarkable, and it begs the question of whether the West will be able to impose sanctions similar to those that hit the auto industry. For Beijing, this is a top-level challenge, and the idea is to bet on core indigenous technologies that will be supplied, starting with parts like landing gear or engines.

Images and Videos | Ken Chen, S5A-0043

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