Chinese Aviation Industry

Just getting a widebody into service that’s within 5-10% of latest Western designs would be a major accomplishment.

Performance metrics aren’t the only thing that matters. COMAC can leverage other advantages. Being local and being willing to work very closely with carriers are already very attractive advantages.

The airline business isn’t only about penny pinching. If it was, we would only see Ryanair clones competing on price.

tacoburger said:

So for the C929 and the C939, what is COMAC going to do to make them more competitive with Airbus and Boeing planes that are going to be flying in the same period? The C919 is already lagging behind in performance compared to similar narrow body passenger jets of today.

And in the 2030s and 2040s, it's expected that Airbus and Boeing are going to be making some major design changes to the traditional passenger jet design in a bid to improve fuel efficiency and performance, from next generation engine designs like open prop engines, to major design changes to the wings and air frame like truss-braced wings, blended body designs, foldable wings etc etc- some of this may or may not work out, but it could be likely be the case that in the 2040s, simply building a larger traditional wide body passenger jet isn't going to cut it.

Is there any plans for more radical new technology being developed to be integrated onto the C939, or is it just going to be a larger but still traditional widebody with minor iterative improvements over the C929?

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The key for COMAC is having a reasonable product on the market.

The C919 is more than a reasonable replacement for the A320 and Boeing 737 both of which had decades to re-iterate and refine. It's performance is not far off from the two current incumbent aircraft.

It will be the same with the C929 and C939. Being better than 777 or A350 is too unrealistic to ask. But being a reasonable replacement of the duopolt for local airlines is a good goal.

Especially in a day and age where there is always the possibility of embargo like what happened to Russia.

HighGround said:

Just getting a widebody into service that’s within 5-10% of latest Western designs would be a major accomplishment.

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That would the C929. The C919+C929 should be enough cover basically 90% of China's range of needs for passenger aircraft. The C939 is when they should experiment a little. It will start flying during the 2040s after all, is China just going to let Airbus and Boeing take the lead for the next 100 years and never try to catch up?

HighGround said:

Performance metrics aren’t the only thing that matters. COMAC can leverage other advantages. Being local and being willing to work very closely with carriers are already very attractive advantages.

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It isn't the only thing, but it's extremely important part. Anyway, this is more about the foreign market anyway. Good luck trying to get foreign airlines to buy your aircraft when your competitors are 15-30% more fuel efficient and have a longer range.

HighGround said:

The airline business isn’t only about penny pinching. If it was, we would only see Ryanair clones competing on price.

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Some next generation aircraft concepts offer other advantages other than cost savings too. More passengers per volume, less noise, more lift means less runway space needed, foldable wings means airlines can store planes a lot easier etc etc.

Anyway, there's other advantages to developing new technology too. There's a variety of spinoff technology that can be developed and of course the technology itself can be easily applied to military aircraft too, especially for transport planes. Any fuel efficiency gained by new engines, new wing/airframe can easily be transferred over to the military. Building a larger version of the C929 with minor improvements isn't going help develop much new technology.

GiantPanda said:

It will be the same with the C929 and C939. Being better than 777 or A350 is too unrealistic to ask.

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For the C929 yes. But the C939 is going to be flying in the 2040s, COMAC will be a mature company with decades of experience under it's belt by then.

tacoburger said:

That would the C929. The C919+C929 should be enough cover basically 90% of China's range of needs for passenger aircraft. The C939 is when they should experiment a little. It will start flying during the 2040s after all, is China just going to let Airbus and Boeing take the lead for the next 100 years and never try to catch up?

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Next 100 years? No. Next 20-30 years? Probably. It takes a while to dislodge an incumbent.

tacoburger said:

It isn't the only thing, but it's extremely important part. Anyway, this is more about the foreign market anyway. Good luck trying to get foreign airlines to buy your aircraft when your competitors are 15-30% more fuel efficient and have a longer range.

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If the A330-NEO can find buyers, a C939 can find them too.

tacoburger said:

Some next generation aircraft concepts offer other advantages other than cost savings too. More passengers per volume, less noise, more lift means less runway space needed, foldable wings means airlines can store planes a lot easier etc etc.

Anyway, there's other advantages to developing new technology too. There's a variety of spinoff technology that can be developed and of course the technology itself can be easily applied to military aircraft too, especially for transport planes. Any fuel efficiency gained by new engines, new wing/airframe can easily be transferred over to the military. Building a larger version of the C929 with minor improvements isn't going help develop much new technology.

For the C929 yes. But the C939 is going to be flying in the 2040s, COMAC will be a mature company with decades of experience under it's belt by then.

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To be frank, by 2040 I don't think technology and performance will be what holds COMAC back. The airliner business is a lot more about salesmanship because ultimately these planes aren't worlds apart in terms of raw performance. And by "salesmanship" I'm not talking about snake oil salesmanship where you're just trying to get the product out. I'm talking about working with airlines to identify their needs and how your product can optimize their operations.

There will be over 10,000 airliners produced by 2034, and probably another 10,000 by 2044. I am confident that China can grab at least some of the widebody and narrow-body market outside of China, even if it's product doesn't have the best performance metrics.

Russian-Chinese heavy helicopter
The schedules and milestones of the Russia-China project to jointly develop a heavy helicopter (AHL) are being met. First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Denis Manturov told reporters about this.
“The stage is advanced. From the point of view of all schedules and stages, everything is being followed. <…> Before this there were approaches, planning, sketches. Now the contract execution stage is already underway,” he said.

AVIC and Air white whale signed agreement on pushing forward low altitude economy and development of W5000 unmanned transport. Sounds like AVIC will develop the avionics for W5000.