image source,REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson
In September 2019, after the Boeing 737Max was grounded by the FAA, the 737Max of various airlines was parked on the tarmac of Grant County International Airport in Washington State. (profile picture)
U.S. plane maker Boeing has announced a total of 480 deliveries in 2022, compared with 661 deliveries by its biggest rival, Airbus. This is the fourth year in a row that Boeing has trailed Airbus.
The gap between the two is mainly reflected in the Chinese market. Boeing delivered eight planes to China last year, while Airbus delivered more than 100.
Not only that, last July, China’s three major state-owned airlines agreed to purchase 292 Airbus aircraft; in November, during German Chancellor Scholz’s visit to China, China Aviation Supplies Corporation announced that it had signed a batch of 140 Airbus aircraft in Beijing Purchase agreement, the purchase agreement includes 8 A350, 132 A320 series passenger aircraft, with a total value of about 17 billion US dollars.
In contrast, Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft were grounded by China in March 2019 after an accident for nearly four years. Before the 2019 grounding, Chinese airlines had 97 of the planes, according to Cirium statistics.
Boeing said in October that another 138 planes it built for Chinese airlines were awaiting delivery in the U.S., but with no indication that Chinese airlines would accept them anytime soon, Boeing has begun reselling them to other airlines.
Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun said he hopes to eventually deliver more planes in China, but “it’s really hard to find signals that things are going to change in China and move toward (favorable) ) in our direction”.
For Boeing, which has been affected by the epidemic, it is even worse.
image source,Getty Images
However, China Southern Airlines showed on its app that it has scheduled two Boeing 737 MAX flights for this Friday. Serve.
According to the application, the above-mentioned scheduled flights are flights from Guangzhou to Zhengzhou and Guangzhou to Wuhan.
Despite the impact of the accident, China “abandoned the United States and favored Europe” in aircraft procurement. Some people believe that China is engaging in “balanced diplomacy” and trying to divide the interests of the United States and Europe. U.S. Commerce Secretary Raimondo complained in 2021 that the Chinese government was preventing its domestic airlines from buying Boeing planes worth “tens of billions of dollars.”
A revived Chinese tourism industry
The Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 are two large passenger aircraft that are among the most in-demand models in the world, and orders from Chinese airlines account for about a quarter of global market demand.
Affected by the epidemic, China’s international flight passenger traffic in 2022 has been in an abnormal state, and the monthly passenger traffic is only equivalent to less than 5% of the same period in 2019.
At the end of November last year, China relaxed the control of the epidemic and announced that entry restrictions will be lifted on January 8 this year. Coupled with the approach of the Spring Festival holiday, the tourism industry has stopped falling and rebounded. According to China’s official data, during the New Year’s Day holiday in 2023, there will be 52.7134 million domestic travel trips nationwide, recovering to 42.8% of the same period during the New Year’s Day holiday in 2019 on a comparable basis.
Several Chinese airlines are rapidly increasing the number of international flights. In this context, the demand for aircraft is also rising.
image source,CNS
Another background is the delivery of China-made large aircraft. On December 9 last year, the first domestically-made large aircraft C919 developed by COMAC was delivered to China Eastern Airlines and officially joined the Eastern Airlines fleet on the same day.
China Eastern Airlines stated that on the basis of obtaining the initial approval from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, China Eastern Airlines will also conduct more than 100 hours of empty aircraft verification test flights to verify and confirm the operational safety, maintenance reliability and various operational support capabilities of the C919. It is expected to meet the regulatory requirements of the Civil Aviation Administration as early as the spring of 2023 and be put into commercial passenger operation.
After 14 years of research and development, C919 is the first jet mainline aircraft independently developed by China’s civil aviation market.
Three years after the C919 project was established in 2007, in October 2010, COMAC submitted the application for the C919 type certificate to the Civil Aviation Administration of China and was accepted. After five years of R&D and manufacturing, in November 2015, the first C919 aircraft rolled off the assembly line.
Although it was offline, it was originally scheduled to be delivered in 2016, but was delayed due to various development issues.
After the successful first flight of C919 in May 2017, it entered the comprehensive flight test stage—six flight test aircraft participated in flight test subjects such as power, performance, and control, and two aircraft participated in static test, fatigue test and other tests.
After five years of test flight and improvements, the type certificate was obtained on September 29, proving that the design of the C919 meets the requirements.
Although it has been officially delivered and put into commercial operation. However, the production license cannot be finally obtained until the manufacturer’s entire production quality system meets the requirements. At this time, it means that the aircraft has the ability to be delivered in batches and is officially on the market.
image source,Getty Images
Two heroes fighting for hegemony to a tripartite confrontation?
The C919 is China’s first large passenger aircraft developed in accordance with international airworthiness standards, with a longest range of about 5,500 kilometers. There are 158 to 168 seats in the C919 cabin, with 6 seats in a row, divided into two sides by a single aisle, with 3 seats on each side. Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 have the same layout.
This type of mainline airliner is the most demanding market in the world. Chinese airline orders account for about a quarter of the market demand. The first batch of customers of the C919 is expected to be mainly Chinese airlines.
Reuters quoted industry analysts as saying that facing the monopoly positions of Boeing and Airbus, it will take ten years for China to actually challenge them.
For example, in order to succeed in business, the C919 also needs to establish a stable maintenance system and improve maintenance personnel training, management system, and aviation material support system. The construction from scratch requires a lot of capital and time investment, and the aviation industry cannot make mistakes. Any problems due to design or maintenance will cause a huge crisis of trust in the model and even the manufacturer.
Secondly, another key step is to obtain the airworthiness certification of the United States or Europe. These include the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the US Aviation Administration (FAA).
The above-mentioned analysts said that if all goes well, the C919 will become the first non-Western country product to obtain airworthiness certification in the main category of jet airliners, which will establish the position of Chinese-made aircraft as the main competitor of Boeing and Airbus in the future.
It is worth noting that although the C919 is known as a “big Chinese-made aircraft”, it relies heavily on components from Western companies, such as the LEAP-1C engine jointly developed by General Motors and Safran of France. Self-developed “Yangtze River-1000A” aero engine has not yet been formally installed and tested for flight.
But one huge advantage China has is its domestic market. The C919 has just been delivered, and the public order has exceeded 1,000, with customers including major Chinese airlines and aircraft leasing companies.
China Eastern Airlines has disclosed that the price of the C919 is US$99 million, while the prices of similar aircraft from Airbus and Boeing are around US$110 million and US$120 million.
COMAC predicts that in the next 20 years, the global delivery of passenger aircraft will exceed 40,000, with a value of 6.4 trillion US dollars. China will be the largest market for new aircraft deliveries. The Chinese aviation market will receive 9,284 jetliners, including 958 regional jets, 6,288 single-aisle jets, and 2,038 dual-aisle jets. By 2041, China’s fleet size will reach 10,007, accounting for 21.1% of the global passenger aircraft fleet. China’s aviation market will become the largest single aviation market in the world.