Chinese Aviation Industry

Engineer said:

No. The Soviets had done it for decades. The Russian has done nichts since the collapse of Soviet Union. As technologies advance, and aviation standards become more stringent, the know-hows that Russia inherited are becoming ever more irrelevant. What I think is the most useful role that Russia will play in C929 project is this: Russia can threaten to cut off natural gas supply to Europe in the middle of winter, should EASA drags its feet in issuing an operational certificate.

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Since 1990, the typical period between introduction of mostly or wholly new medium to large commercial passenger aircraft model by Boeing or Airbus has been about 15-20 years. Basic Design expertise is not vanishing with retirement merely because only incremental improvement to existing model is actually being turned into cut metal. In between, no new model is released, but much on going conceptualization, preliminary and advanced design work, and envelop pushing research and implementation work is happening. Some minor loss of experience in undoubtedly occurring even with Boeing and airbus, but by and large institutionalize experience and skill is maintained and Enhanced.

The same is undoubtedly true of Illyusin and Tupolev. They may not have released a new design, but that doesn't mean they have forgotten how to do so, or have not.kept abreast of major development, nor have not undertaken design exercises and practical experimentation to ensure continuity of skill and experience in between opportunity to introduce major models.

vincent said:

Pretty sure the design team are all retired by now

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True.

But the design papers, wind tunnel data and lessons and experiences stayed with UAC, right? Just avoid one mistake that the Soviet/Russians made decades ago will save years for C929, and the Russians have the incentive in C929 to avoid these mistakes for their own investment. That is the value of Russian participation, very high value which Boeing and Airbus or anyone else will not share with China.

vincent said:

Pretty sure the design team are all retired by now

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Maybe, but unless they all retired at once, and the remaining design staff in Illyusin and Tupolev has from before that time and ever since not actually work on anything except drink vodka and smoke, we might assume as with any organization adopted to a fairly long product cycle, some process of preserving and enhancing institutional knowledge and experience is at work, and on going design, both for actual projects and for study, has been continuing since when those design team were still on the payroll.

One might say the Russians could afford to forget more practical experience with designing large passenger or cargo transports than the Chinese ever had, and still have a thing or two they can teach the Chinese.

Engineer said:

As technologies advance, and aviation standards become more stringent, the know-hows that Russia inherited are becoming ever more irrelevant.

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Il-96 is slightly older than A-330, which is more or less comparable(more direct A-340 is dead, as it has 4 engines). Both had some updates in between.
A-330neo(not a scratch-designed plane by any standards) is yet to fly.

p.s. btw, there will be an exciting event exactly today, closely connected to what UAC can bring to the table.

Richard Santos said:

One might say the Russians could afford to forget more practical experience with designing large passenger or cargo transports than the Chinese ever had, and still have a thing or two they can teach the Chinese.

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We're not conducting a ranking exercise among the countries or companies. Yes, Russia had some relevant design experiences, thirty years ago. China has never designed a wide-body passenger airliner. For that, Russia is more experienced than China in this regard and "still have a thing or two they can teach the Chinese."

But so what? Nobody here is arguing that China is more experienced than Russia in designing wide-body passenger aircraft or they can't learn a thing or two from Russia. The key question here is whether those benefits are large enough for China to want to form an equal partnership with Russia to jointly develop C929, having embarked on the journey to develop passenger aircraft with increasing capacity and sophistication. China is not so much developing a large passenger aircraft per se as to developing the commercial aircraft industry. From the share of the work that Russia is going to take on, there is nothing that China can't tackle with their own efforts. From an experience and technology standpoint, it does not constitute a steeper learning curve than ARJ21, Y20 and C919. Besides, a lot of subsystems will be sourced from western suppliers regardless.

Simply put, technologies or dated experiences are not the driving factors for China to form the partnership with Russia. The challenge to C929 program is much more about commercial success than technical one.

Engineering knowhow isn't some nebulous concept which is somehow connected to a country but engineering knowhow are companies and engineers in combination with national science and research facilities.

And China did a better job in cultivating an engineering culture within the country than Russia since the end of the Soviet Union.

Pmichael said:

And China did a better job in cultivating an engineering culture within the country than Russia since the end of the Soviet Union.

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And still technical level ov Russian planes is ahead of COMACs. You can't overcome decades of engineering experience in short dash with just money and young, bright heads.
P.s. On a side note, today is a bad day for "lack of achievements on Russian part".
Because, well

...MC-21 flew exactly today.

Basically, Russia can allow such project to be much more daring, compared to one which is purely Chinese. And still have good chances to not screw up schedule too much.

weig2000 said:

The challenge to C929 program is much more about commercial success than technical one.

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This really doesn't make much sense since technical success is a must in a passenger liner platform to gain commercial success but technical success does not automatically equate to commercial success.
In other words, with no technical success there will be no commercial success.

SamuraiBlue said:

This really doesn't make much sense since technical success is a must in a passenger liner platform to gain commercial success but technical success does not automatically equate to commercial success.
In other words, with no technical success there will be no commercial success.

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It doesn't make much sense to you because you don't think beyond the superficial. If you don't have/develop or can't source proper technologies, you can't build a C929, and if you can't build a C929, you won't have a commercial success. Do I need to state the obvious to insult the intelligence of most of the members here (except a few) and waste my time?

For your benefit, I was trying to say building a technologically viable C929 is far less challenging for China than making sure it's a commercial success. Keep in mind, C929 is for international flights mostly and has a much smaller market than C919. China's domestic market alone can guarantee C919 will go a long way on the road to commercial success.

Pmichael said:

Engineering knowhow isn't some nebulous concept which is somehow connected to a country but engineering knowhow are companies and engineers in combination with national science and research facilities.

And China did a better job in cultivating an engineering culture within the country than Russia since the end of the Soviet Union.

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Exactly Here are sample of Chinese aerospace factory and institute notice most of the technical staff are young
The profile of different Chinese aerospace institute
China Aerospace - Institute of Science and Technology 283 plant Wang Feng
China Aerospace - Institute of Science and Technology 25 of the core of the core micro-system research and development team
China Aerospace - the second division of the second division of the technical team