A C919 passenger jet taking off at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai on Friday. The plane symbolized the industrial might of an emerging superpower — and its dream to dominate a new
technological era.Pool photo by
SHANGHAI — China’s commercial aerospace dreams
took wing on Friday, as the first Chinese-built passenger jetliner completed
its first public flight test, embodying the country’s ambitions to take on the
industry champions,Boeing and Airbus
With a brisk breeze blowing through light smog
under overcast skies, a large crowd of government officials and aerospace
executives gathered to watch as the plane, a white C919, with a green-and-blue
striped tail, underwent a lengthy preflight check, then rumbled down a runway
and into the sky for a test flight that lasted about an hour.
The aircraft landed safely and Comac, its
manufacturer, declared it a success. But the program still has a long journey
ahead
It is years — if not decades — behind aircraft
made by Airbus and Boeing that are cheaper to fuel and easier to maintain.
Safety regulators in Europe, the United States and elsewhere still have to
certify the plane before it can be sold outside China. And including parts like
the engines, its cockpit and its belly, the C919 is filled with gear made by
Western industrial giants like General Electric and Honeywell
Continue reading the main story
BUT ON FRIDAY, NONE OF THAT MATTERED. FOR A
COUNTRY THAT ONLY 40 YEARS AGO WAS ONE OF THE POOREST IN THE WORLD, THE C919
SYMBOLIZED THE INDUSTRIAL MIGHT OF AN EMERGING SUPERPOWER — AND ITS DREAM TO
DOMINATE A NEW TECHNOLOGICAL ERA
Many top leaders attended the event, a sign of
the economic and geopolitical significance that Beijing attaches to its entry
into open competition with Airbus and Boeing. Planning for the 158-seat C919
began more than a decade ago, but the plane has become a centerpiece of the
country’s more recent Made in China 2025 plan to become largely self-sufficient
in many high-tech goods and to export them as well
“We used to believe that it was better
to buy than to build, better to rent than to buy,” President Xi Jinping of
China told workers during a recent visit here. “We need to spend more on
researching and manufacturing our "
own airliners
China’s investment in civilian aircraft
manufacturing is enormous. The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, better
known as Comac, unveiled the extent of its activities for the first time on
Thursday, including a view of the second C919, still being assembled
That aircraft, coated in green anticorrosion
paint and not yet displaying any airline’s colors, will not be ready until
September, said Bao Pengli, Comac’s deputy director of project management for
manufacturing and final assembly. Only after building six test planes will Comac
decide whether it is ready for large-scale production, he said
Comac says it already has 570 orders from 23
buyers. But those have almost entirely come from Chinese companies and a couple
of small overseas air carriers with links to China. A notable exception is an
order for 20 planes from General Electric Capital Aviation Services; G.E. is
also a big supplier to the C919 program
The C919 is designed to compete with the Airbus
320 and the Boeing 737, single-aisle planes that are the workhorses of the
world’s airlines. For Comac, the plane represents the culmination of decades of
work; for Airbus and Boeing, it is a challenge to a profitable duopoly that has
endured for decades
One question is whether China has learned
enough about aircraft manufacturing to make the C919 competitive with the 737
and A320. It is unclear that China can produce aircraft that are as efficient
and reliable as even the current generation of Boeings and Airbuses
“If you have a slight rivet head
protrusion, it does affect the air flow,” and that may mean extra fuel
consumption, said Martin Craigs, chairman of the Aerospace Forum Asia, a
commercial aircraft industry trade association
China has learned a lot in recent years about
how to build single-aisle planes by making many parts for Boeing 737s and by
assembling entire A320s for Airbus. But the country’s dream of becoming a
competitor in the global market for commercial aircraft started in 1972, when
President Nixon visited China in a Boeing 707
Chinese officials loved the plane and later
bought 10 Boeing 707s, as well as 40 spare Pratt & Whitney engines. China
to some extent copied the fuselages of the 707 for a small production run of
Y-10 planes for flight experiments, using the additional engines
Commercial aircraft often share DNA with
military aerospace programs. Boeing 707 siblings like the KC-135 tanker and
RC-135 reconnaissance plane are used by the United States Air Force, while
Airbus has a sizable military equipment division. China’s aerospace program is
under particularly tight government oversight
Comac, based in Shanghai, is under the direct
control of China’s cabinet. The state-owned enterprise that jointly owns Comac
and is most closely linked to it is the Aviation Industry Corporation of China,
or AVIC, which makes China’s fighters and bombers. It is also G.E.’s joint
venture partner in producing sophisticated avionics equipment for the C919
G.E. said in an email that legal agreements
protected its intellectual property from misuse
Aviation experts say that whatever its ability
to compete on cost, the C919 is likely to be safe
Arnold Barnett, the dean of aviation safety
statistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that China had
had only one fatal crash in the past decade, even as its aviation sector
expanded to become the second busiest after that of the United States. One
person has been killed per 70 million passengers boarded in China, compared
with one passenger per 25 million boardings in the West, he said
Gary Moran, the head of Asia aviation insurance
at Aon, a large global insurance broker, said that as insurers assessed the
risks of a new aircraft like the C919, they were likely to be reassured by the
large role that multinationals had played. In addition to the avionics, G.E.
has also collaborated on the engines, while Honeywell is providing auxiliary power
systems, wheels, brakes, fly-by-wire controls and navigation equipment
For China, the C919 is just the beginning. Even
if the plane proves less fuel-efficient than Western alternatives, the
state-controlled airline industry may still be required to buy it, and the
Chinese aviation market in the coming years is expected to rival only the
American market in size and perhaps surpass it
And although the plane represents a new
challenger for aircraft sales, Airbus and Boeing, increasingly dependent on Chinese
airlines for sales as well as on Chinese suppliers for parts, publicly welcomed
its arrival
Comac is already looking past the C919 to the
design and manufacture of a wide-body jet that would compete with larger, more
profitable planes like the Boeing 747 and the A340. Steven Lien, the president
for Asia at Honeywell’s aerospace division, said that Russia and China were in
the final stages of negotiating a plan to jointly design and produce it
Honeywell expects $15 billion in sales to the
C919 program during its 20 or more years of production. But Honeywell plans to
watch Western export control regulations closely in this process, he said
“We follow them very, very closely,” he
said, “and we would never take a
. "shortcut
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