I am curious. Do you have some empirical data to support your statement regarding volume needed to be "good enough"?
Sofar ARJ 21 has bagged 300 firm order But the main value of the investment is the experience gained from designing, manufacturing, testing and logistic of the FIRST civilian aircraft designed and built in China.
It take a long time because China has no experience and tradition in building passenger aircraft. The testing alone take 7 years. Ensuring the safety of 100 lives is more difficult than 1 jet fighter pilot
Canada has a long history of building civilian aircraft predated the WWII. De Havilland has a long tradition of building bush aircraft Buffalo then The DASH 7 series before it was amalgamated with Northrup Canada to become the Canadair then it was sold to Bombardier. Before that Canada designed and built the AVRO arrow fighter jet . Here is the interview with AVIC officer courtesy of xyz from CDF explaining why it take so long. Critic to the ARJ 21 is unjustified and misplaced. It show the insecurity of western industry and press.
Actually the design is is not so bad it has shorter range and not so fuel efficient . But that is because it is all metal construction and reflect the Chinese technology in 2002 when the project started
China’s First Homegrown Commercial Jet: Clear Skies Ahead?
Apr 09, 2015
On December 30, 2014, Li Jia Xiang, chief of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), flew on a regional jet liner from Shanghai Pudong to Beijing. But this journey was no ordinary flight.
After it safely landed in Beijing Airport, the jetliner, an ARJ21, had finally earned its Type Certificate from CAAC, which meant the aircraft model had satisfied its basic safety requirements and could enter China’s civil aviation market. It took the ARJ21 — the first commercially available aircraft ever designed in China — six long years to get this entry ticket.
Luo Ronghuai, deputy general manager of the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) and the chief of the ARJ21 Project, has been deeply involved in the whole process — from design and R&D through manufacturing to flight testing.
What challenges has ARJ21 gone through? Are these made-in-China aircraft safe enough? Who will purchase them? What is the status of China’s second foray into aircraft design, the larger C919? And what impact have these domestically designed and built aircraft on the upstream and downstream industry value chain? China Knowledge@Wharton talked with Luo Ronghuai recently about these questions and others.
Below is an edited version of the interview.
China Knowledge@Wharton: Let’s talk first about ARJ21 in detail. What does the plane look like, and what are the aircraft it will be competing with primarily in the global market?
Luo Rong Huai: The ARJ21 jet is a 70- to 90-seat, short-to-medium range, turbofan powered regional aircraft. It’s the first civil aircraft to which China owns independent intellectual property rights, and it’s also the first time the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has agreed to accept and approve aircraft applications for flight certification based on the reviews of the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
Its major competition in the world will be [the Embraer] ERJ175 of Brazil and [the Sukhoi Superjet 100] SSJ from Russia, both regional aircraft with 70 to 110 seats.
“Since it was the first time China had designed an aircraft, we had no experience, so there were many experiments. We had to try again and again in order to get the results we wanted.”
China Knowledge@Wharton: The ARJ21 jet liner accomplished its first flight in November 2008. Why did take so long — six years — to obtain its certification?
Luo: Since it was the first time China had designed an aircraft, we had no experience, so there were many experiments. We had to try again and again in order to get the results we wanted. After the ARJ21’s first flight in 2008, we originally anticipated it would take at most four years to get the aircraft certified –
It took us a long time to study, explore and learn what we needed to know to meet all those certification requirements. For example, there’s an experiment called the “Natural Icing Flight Test” which originally was planned to take place in Xinjiang province [the region in the Northwest corner of China]. However, after flying the aircraft there repeatedly over a period of four years, we had still only completed part of that testing regimen. Finally, we had to look for suitable weather conditions in North America instead.
In order to finish all the flight tests of the ARJ21, for six years, we took the aircraft to the most extreme ends of China: The furthest north, the deepest south, the coldest, the hottest, the windiest and the most humid places in the country. And, we went to the U.S. and Canada to find extremely icy environments – the plan flew all around the Northern Hemisphere.
In addition to the enormous amount of time and resources we spent on overcoming technical barriers, we also gradually built up, for the first time, a team of testing and certification staff. But we’re still small. In Seattle, Boeing has a team of more than 250 people that work on flight test certification. Our Shanghai certification center has only 50 to 60 people, and the CAAC has another 30 to 40 people.
China Knowledge@Wharton: What are these flight tests? Can you give some examples?
Luo: The major target of flight tests is to look at the most dangerous potential moments of the flight, and see how your aircraft performs — for example, a stall, passing through a 27-knot crosswind, or an engine failure, to name a few. Test pilots have to proactively seek out these low-probability events, which only happen once in tens of thousands of hours of flying time.
For example, there’s the “one engine inoperative” test, which refers, unsurprisingly, to a situation when one of the plane’s two engines isn’t working. So, you have to have test pilots shut down an engine in mid-flight to find out if the plane can be flown acceptably in that condition. But that’s only one of many, and these mandatory experiments take thousands of test flights. Only when you have tried to fly a plane under every dangerous condition you could anticipate, and proved that it can handle them, can the aircraft be considered safe to sell and fly commercially.
The type certification we took the ARJ21 through involved testing thousands of individual items. In the end, it added up to 3,418 reports and 300,000 pages, which, if you stacked them up, would be 30 meters high.
Although it was a long process, we have accumulated a lot of valuable experience for future aircraft tests. Having gone through this will make it easier and more efficient when we have to start putting our next aircraft, the large C919, through all these experiments in near future.
“The ARJ21 is the first regional aircraft China has produced based on international standards, and that it has been certified is a milestone for China’s aviation industry.”
China Knowledge@Wharton: What does this certification mean? What impact will it have for Chinese-made planes in future?
Luo: The ARJ21 is the first regional aircraft China has produced based on international standards, and that it has been certified is a milestone for China’s aviation industry. It demonstrates that we’ve successful developed our regional aircraft manufacturing technology.
The global aviation community recognizes the maturity of a country’s aviation industry by its ability to produce new aircraft that can be certified flightworthy. In the ARJ21-700 project, we have accomplished the entire process — from design to manufacturing, experimentation to flight tests. We mastered a bunch of new technology, new materials, new processes, and accumulated a lot of project-management experience, which has also laid the groundwork for future big aircraft projects like the C919.
