[WeissVine]

BEIJING - CHINA has unveiled its first large domestically produced passenger jet, which aims to compete with Airbus and Boeing in the global aviation market, state media reported Tuesday.

The C919 prototype made its debut at an aviation exhibition in the southern province of Guangdong, and three major state-owned airlines were due to sign deals to buy the planes on Tuesday, the official China Daily said.

Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac), the plane's manufacturer, has forecast demand for C919s in the domestic and overseas markets to hit 2,000, the report quoted Comac vice-president Wu Guanghui as saying.

The single-aisle jet, which seats between 168 and 190 passengers, is due to make a trial flight in 2014 and be delivered to clients in 2016. It is seen as a potential competitor to the Airbus A320 and the Boeing 737.

It is part of China's plan to break the duopoly of Airbus and Boeing in the production of large commercial aircraft, and could dampen prospects for the two industry giants in what will soon become the world's biggest aviation market.

Air traffic in China, which has doubled in the past decade, is again expected to double by 2020, with the number of airports growing from 160 to 240, according to forecasts drawn up by Airbus. -- AFP

[WeissVine]

China Aims to Rival Airbus, Boeing With Single-Aisle Jet

[joe-salton]

Still too early to say........

[rsdefwgxvcfdts]

just need to wait a decade. China already manufacture fighter jet.
China will be only doing the body and wing. Main engine still from western.

[SpecialOFFER]

I don't trust China products. Given time, they will screw things up with replacing inferior quality parts.

[chuecfafresslds]

I don't trust China products. Given time, they will screw things up with replacing inferior quality parts.

Inferior parts still ok at times. Fake parts sure mati. If eggs, soy sauce etc they are into fakes, surely they will produce fakes for expensive items like spare parts of planes.

[esanamaserrn]

I think use of fake products is due to poor QC. The ipod, iphone and ipads all seem to be very very well made and all comes from China.

So it all depends of QC.

Inferior parts still ok at times. Fake parts sure mati. If eggs, soy sauce etc they are into fakes, surely they will produce fakes for expensive items like spare parts of planes.

[chuecfafresslds]

I think use of fake products is due to poor QC. The ipod, iphone and ipads all seem to be very very well made and all comes from China.

So it all depends of QC.

The problem is, after awhile, they cut corners to save on costs. Where health is concerned, don't play play with Chinese products. Clothes, furnitures, carpets etc it's ok. Plane and its parts, better not.

[Pheboasmabs]

I think use of fake products is due to poor QC. The ipod, iphone and ipads all seem to be very very well made and all comes from China.

So it all depends of QC.

QC costs $$$ & in China there's alot of opportunists in China who wouldn't hesitate to cut corners even if it kills people.

iPad, iPhone, iPod are products by Apple an american company & they pay for the QC because they have a reputation to uphold.

China may be able to make airliners but it'll be a long time before people have confidence to buy from them.

[WepKeyday]

I think you are missing the point. This is not about Ipad. This is about aircraft where safety is paramount. We are dealing with a culture that has no qualms about selling tainted milk to kids. The only reason it surfaced is because the NZ PM stepped in.

Unless the aircraft company has a foreign stake with some influence over company integrity, its reliability will be a concern.

I am just amazed that you think that QC will do the job. They are world renowned for cutting corners. People go to China and India for cheap labour and the control over quality is conditional before the contract is signed. The word quality is not in the DNA of India and China.

Just this month they jailed the father who ran a blog on the tainted milk.

We all should be proud of our ancestry but we should not be blind to the bad practices. China is now a world economic power purely on the back of cheap labour. Volume counts. Class, quality, integrity, reliability, honour etc are not something that that is second nature to them.

Russia is yet another.

The fact that you connect fake products to lack of QC is alarming and shows poor judgement.

I think use of fake products is due to poor QC. The ipod, iphone and ipads all seem to be very very well made and all comes from China.

So it all depends of QC.

[dmoiknlasd]

just need to wait a decade. China already manufacture fighter jet.
China will be only doing the body and wing. Main engine still from western.

Honeywell International Inc. will supply power units, onboard computing systems, wheels and brakes;

Rockwell Collins Inc. will handle navigation systems;

GE Aviation is building the avionics;

Eaton Corp. is involved with fuel and hydraulics;

Parker Aerospace of Irvine, Calif., is responsible for flight controls.

Powering the aircraft will be two fuel-efficient engines
built by CFM International, a company co-owned by GE
and French conglomerate Safran.

Apart from this, the landing gear will be by supplied by HS, Canada.

These constitute almost 80% of the aircraft's engineering value.

Protecting secrets

Roger Seager, GE Aviation’s vice president and general manager for China, said he was
confident that his company could protect its intellectual property.

[esanamaserrn]

I think it depends on whether they have a vested interested. If they are trying to compete with Boeing and Airbus they very well know that quality must be top notch. One bad incident and they are finished. So I would not be surprised if they are super careful. My point is that the Chinese can make very high quality products if they need to.

Was reading an article about how a huge section of the San Francisco bridge was made in China, shipped to San Francisco and welded in place.

The problem is, after awhile, they cut corners to save on costs. Where health is concerned, don't play play with Chinese products. Clothes, furnitures, carpets etc it's ok. Plane and its parts, better not.

[chuecfafresslds]

I think it depends on whether they have a vested interested. If they are trying to compete with Boeing and Airbus they very well know that quality must be top notch. One bad incident and they are finished. So I would not be surprised if they are super careful. My point is that the Chinese can make very high quality products if they need to.

Was reading an article about how a huge section of the San Francisco bridge was made in China, shipped to San Francisco and welded in place.

Agree with you completely on their capabilities. I am just not comfortable with their greed and level of corruption. I bought some chocolates in ShenZhen recently. They looked exactly like the brand I was after. After I ate them, I realised it was not the brand I was after but the wrappings sure looks almost the same. I almost puked. Afraid of some food poisoning stuff.

[esanamaserrn]

GFK - what you fail to note is that all these JV are required to setup operations in China.

Chinese are not relearning the wheel, they want to move up the curve fast. So they take this huge bat and whacked it on the head of GE, Honeywell, Safrane, etc etc etc - you want a piece of this market follow our rules. BTW GE is one of the companies placing orders for this jet!!!! Talk about sucking up to Beijing.

And they have the market with the cash to boot. This is the big stick they are using - $480Billion in jets over the next 20 years!

"China will likely need 4,330 new planes, worth $480 billion, by 2029, according to Chicago-based Boeing, as economic growth spurs leisure and business travel. Nationwide airline passenger numbers jumped 18 percent from a year earlier in the first nine months to 200.7 million, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. "






China’s challenger to Boeing Co. and Airbus SAS expects to announce the first order for its single- aisle passenger plane next week, breaking into a market that may be worth $1.68 trillion over 20 years.

Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China plans to announce the C919 deal at Airshow China, held in the southern city of Zhuhai, Yuan Wenfeng, deputy general manager at its program management department, said by phone last week. He declined to say how large the order will be or who the customer is.

The C919 increases competition for Boeing’s 737 and Airbus’s A320 in the narrowbody segment that will be the largest part of the global plane market through 2029, according to Boeing. The Zhuhai exhibition, which starts Nov. 16, will also feature debuts for a dozen locally developed planes and the first show flight for Comac’s ARJ21 regional jet, as China showcases efforts to develop its aerospace industry.

“This is a big breakthrough for China, which will eventually become a player in the global aircraft market,” said Bai Bingyang, an analyst at Capital Securities Corp in Shanghai. “Boeing and Airbus’s duopoly will be under threat.”

Government-controlled Comac may sell more than 2,000 C919s worldwide over 20 years, Yuan said in February. The company aims to announce orders for 100 this year, he said then. Air China Ltd., China Southern Airlines Co. and China Eastern Airlines Corp., the nation’s big three state-controlled carriers, have all said they will support local planemakers.

“The C919 is a project that China is determined to make a mark with,” said Armand Cao, a Shanghai-based analyst at Frost & Sullivan China. The first orders will likely come from domestic carriers, he said.

Narrowbody Competition

The 168-seater C919 is due to enter service in 2014. The ARJ21, which is running at least a year behind schedule, can carry about 70 passengers. Comac signed an order for as many as 25 ARJ21s with GE’s plane-leasing arm at the 2008 Zhuhai show, its first overseas deal.

State-controlled Comac will have a 1,500 square-meter stand at this year’s Zhuhai show, which runs from Nov. 16 to Nov. 21. The event will feature about 600 exhibitors, including Boeing, Airbus, Rolls-Royce Group Plc and Honeywell International Inc., according to the organizers. China’s J-10 fighter jet, Bombardier Inc. business jets and Airbus’s A380 will be among the roughly 70 planes on display.

“We’re expecting strong interest and a large turnout,” Yuan said. “China’s aviation industry has been growing very rapidly and this momentum will continue.”

GE, Honeywell

Comac is working with overseas suppliers on the C919, including CFM International Inc., a venture between General Electric Co. and Safran SA that has won a $10 billion contract to make the plane’s engines. Other suppliers include Honeywell, United Technologies Corp. and Parker Hannifin Corp.

Chinese airlines have continued to buy Boeing and Airbus planes even as China develops its own aircraft. Last week, Toulouse, France-based Airbus won orders for 102 planes from China, including 50 A320s. The planemaker will assemble half of the single-aisle planes at a plant in Tianjin, China, its only production line outside of Europe. Boeing has won 737 orders from Air China and Okay Airways Co. this year.

China will likely need 4,330 new planes, worth $480 billion, by 2029, according to Chicago-based Boeing, as economic growth spurs leisure and business travel. Nationwide airline passenger numbers jumped 18 percent from a year earlier in the first nine months to 200.7 million, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

The growth in China and other markets means that the global narrowbody fleet will likely more than double by 2029 to 25,000 planes, according to Boeing’s forecast. Such expansion may be enough to sustain an increasing number of suppliers, said Randy Tinseth, the planemaker’s marketing vice president.

“That’s clearly room for us to grow, that’s room for Airbus to grow and that’s probably room for one or more competitors,” he said last week in Beijing.

To contact the reporter on this story: Wing-Gar Cheng in Hong Kong at wgcheng@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Neil Denslow at ndenslow@bloomberg.net

Honeywell International Inc. will supply power units, onboard computing systems, wheels and brakes;

Rockwell Collins Inc. will handle navigation systems;

GE Aviation is building the avionics;

Eaton Corp. is involved with fuel and hydraulics;

Parker Aerospace of Irvine, Calif., is responsible for flight controls.

Powering the aircraft will be two fuel-efficient engines
built by CFM International, a company co-owned by GE
and French conglomerate Safran.

Apart from this, the landing gear will be by supplied by HS, Canada.

These constitute almost 80% of the aircraft's engineering value.

Protecting secrets

Roger Seager, GE Aviation’s vice president and general manager for China, said he was
confident that his company could protect its intellectual property.

[esanamaserrn]

The way I look at it, there really is no big secret to build a jet. But you need all the ingredients. For example - top notch aeronautical engineers. Lets see 10 years of university edu in the US + on the job training and you will churn out a pretty decent engineer. You could also just hire the engineers straight out of PW or RR.

Comac by working so closely with all the major players will get to know the technical staff very well. It is very possible that they start headhunting a whole team to help fine tune the jet. GE pays X Comac pays 2X. As simple as that.

That is precisely what Silicon Valley is doing. They just cream off all the brightest from India. India pays x, silicon Valley pays 2X + lifestyle - no caste system, kids get good opportunity.

Of course you need the market (China has that), you need the $$ (China has that) and you need the manufacturing supply chain from electronics to titanium to carbon fiber (China has that).

I think what is lacking - a BIG BIG problem is actual experience in designing an aircraft. But only way is to wade in and learn. I do not think the Chinese engineers are stupid. As they put the aircraft into their fleet they will learn very quickly.

[arraxylap]

Chinese jets are the future way to fly, theres no doubt about it; as for safty - NO BIG DEAL very most die only.

[DoctorTOneery]

Honeywell International Inc. will supply power units, onboard computing systems, wheels and brakes;

Rockwell Collins Inc. will handle navigation systems;

GE Aviation is building the avionics;

Eaton Corp. is involved with fuel and hydraulics;

Parker Aerospace of Irvine, Calif., is responsible for flight controls.

Powering the aircraft will be two fuel-efficient engines
built by CFM International, a company co-owned by GE
and French conglomerate Safran.

Apart from this, the landing gear will be by supplied by HS, Canada.

These constitute almost 80% of the aircraft's engineering value.

Protecting secrets

Roger Seager, GE Aviation’s vice president and general manager for China, said he was
confident that his company could protect its intellectual property.

You think Airbus and Boeing build everything 100%? They have hundreds of sub-cons and suppliers from all over the world

[Michmant]

BEIJING - CHINA has unveiled its first large domestically produced passenger jet, which aims to compete with Airbus and Boeing in the global aviation market, state media reported Tuesday.

These sorts of stories should be published on the 1st of April.

[RafaelYV]

Good point,Sam Leong.

[Plaumpholavup]

These sorts of stories should be published on the 1st of April.

with qantas, everyday will soon become 1st of April