The short and medium-haul jet manufactured by Comac is a prestige project of the Chinese government. It is intended to compete with the Airbus A320 neo and the Boeing 737 MAX.
(Photo: IMAGO/Xinhua)
Beijing In the videos of the first commercial flight of the Chinese-developed C919 passenger plane, laughing passengers eagerly wave China flags. The Chinese state media present a prestige project of the state leadership: They want to establish a domestic competitor to Airbus and Boeing. But many key components of the C919, including the engine, come from western suppliers.
The market maturity of the narrow-body jet had been repeatedly delayed. The manufacturer Commercial Aviation Corporation, Comac for short, had already started development in 2008, and production started at the end of 2011. However, the C919 has only been officially approved in China since September 2022. After numerous test flights, the first commercial flight from Shanghai took place on Sunday Beijing, operated by China Eastern airline with 128 passengers on board.
“After generations of efforts, we have finally broken the West’s monopoly on aviation,” jubilantly the Beijing Daily newspaper. The C919 is intended to compete with Airbus’ popular short- and medium-haul aircraft, the A320 neo and Boeing’s 737 Max. The order books of the two established manufacturers are full until the end of the decade, so the waiting times for interested airlines are correspondingly long.
It is a “small but symbolic challenge to the Boeing-Airbus duopoly,” says Scott Kennedy, China expert at the US think tanks Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). On closer inspection, however, the C919 is only a Chinese aircraft on the outside – it is American on the inside.
Bonnie Glaser from the US think tank German Marshall Fund also points to the numerous components from non-Chinese manufacturers that Comac relies on. The engines come from the French-American producer CFM International. Other suppliers include GE, Honeywell, Parker Aerospace and Liebherr. The German family company supplies the anti-icing system for the wings.
China’s head of state Xi Jinping describes C919 as a milestone
The thin-skinned reaction of the party media to questions about the numerous international suppliers shows how important the project is for the state leadership. Anyone who thinks building a big airplane is “like putting different parts together with blocks or Lego is simply ignorant,” fumed the Global Times. The project is “above any doubt”. At the end of September, China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping described the development of the Chinese medium-haul passenger aircraft as a milestone in his country’s quest for self-determination.
The C919 has a maximum range of around 5500 kilometers and is designed for 158 to 168 passengers. According to the Bloomberg news agency, the price is around US$99 million, before the usual discounts for airlines. So far, the machine has only been approved for flights within China. The airline China Eastern, which also carried out the first flight, intends to use the machine on the route from Shanghai to Chengdu in the future.
According to official information, Comac has already received more than 1000 orders for the C919. According to Bloomberg, however, most of these are unconfirmed or come from Chinese aircraft rental companies who have not yet leased the jet to an airline.
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