China is intensifying its efforts to break the grip of Boeing and Airbus on the aircraft market, as the manufacturer of the country's first domestically-made passenger plane seeks to obtain certificates to fly outside the country's shores.
The heavily subsidized COMAC C919, which made its first commercial flight in 2023, is already flown on domestic routes by China's three large state-owned airlines: Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines. Starting this month, China Eastern will fly the C919 between Hong Kong and Shanghai, its first regular commercial route outside mainland China.
Yang Yang, the company's deputy general manager of marketing and sales, told the Financial Times that the company aims to have the single-aisle plane flying in Southeast Asia by 2026 and obtain European certification as early as this year.
“We hope to operate more aircraft domestically in China and accurately identify any issues before then… and move them to Southeast Asia.”
The C919 is a pivotal project in President Xi Jinping's campaign China To advance the technological value chain, with the ultimate goal of challenging the Western monopoly of Boeing and Airbus.
Boeing's financial woes and delivery delays, as well as wider supply chain problems in the industry that have left it and Airbus facing engine and component shortages, have weighed on the global aviation sector and offered hope to new entrants.
The world will need 42,430 new aircraft over the next two decades, nearly 80% of which will be single-aisle aircraft, according to a recent report. Airbus forecasts in 2024. Aviation consultancy IBA expects Comac can increase its production of C919s — 16 of which have been delivered to Chinese airlines as of December — from one to 11 aircraft per month by 2040, at which time it can deliver approx. From 2000 units of the aircraft. .
However, while COMAC will eventually penetrate export markets, “for the foreseeable future, Airbus and Boeing will be the main suppliers of narrow-body aircraft to most airlines,” said Jonathan McDonald, IBA's director of classic and freighter aircraft.
Global certification and maintenance support remains a major hurdle to COMAC's ambition to operate the C919 overseas.
In a move to strengthen its international presence COMAC It opened new overseas locations in Singapore and Hong Kong in October.
The new offices were necessary to help drive new aircraft orders from customers, according to Mayur Patel, president of the Asia region for OAG Aviation.
But building “elaborate product support facilities in export markets is very difficult and expensive work, and a necessary precondition for competing with Airbus and Boeing,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory.
While several airlines in Asia have expressed interest in the C919, some executives privately say they are still hesitant.
“Maintenance support is the main issue,” said a person close to Indonesia’s TransNusa, which has already taken delivery of three smaller ARJ21s from Comac and is considering flying the C919.
Analysts say the path for COMAC to obtain external certification, especially from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, is also challenging.
“IBA does not expect the C919 to be certified in Europe in the near future,” MacDonald said. “Europe has very strict certification standards.”
Meanwhile, certification from the US Federal Aviation Authority is likely to be complicated by tensions between the US and China.
Regulators in the European Union and the United States are often the “gold standard” for other global authorities, according to David Yu, an aviation industry expert at New York University in Shanghai.
In parallel with the C919, COMAC is also developing its first wide-body aircraft, the C929. At one of China's largest air shows in Zhuhai in November, the company announced that state-owned Air China had become the first airline to pledge to fly the plane, which is intended to challenge larger planes made by Airbus and Boeing such as the 787. Dreamliner.
Sash Tusa, a UK-based aviation and defense analyst, said that while the C929 offered China another opportunity to demonstrate its technological progress in the aviation sector, the country would likely still rely on outboard engines for commercial aircraft. IBA estimates that the C929 will not enter service before 2040.
For the C919, major components are still made in the West. The aircraft's engines are supplied by the French-American venture CFM International while the auxiliary power units are manufactured by US-based Honeywell.
“So far, COMAC is building aircraft that are mostly Western in value, but with Chinese structures,” said Abulafia of AeroDynamic Advisory. “This makes production ramps dependent on the West’s willingness to continue providing systems, and given the Trump presidency, there is no guarantee of that at all.”
Tusa said Comac may not be able to capture any “fair share of the global market” over the next decade, but it would provide an important “inbound alternative” to domestic Chinese airlines.
“Airbus builds in China. Boeing doesn’t do that,” he said. “So Comac comes in as the second supplier. Import substitution does not make you competitive. This makes you an act of state policy.
Additional reporting by William Langley in Guangzhou
