COMAC C919 - China's first modern airliner

tphuang said:

It's a lot harder to compete in the a320/b737 segment than the bombardier/erj segment. And China has a large domestic market. Seeing that C919 doesn't offer any noticeable advantage over a320neo, it's not surprising that COMAC would focus on domestic market and possibly some of Asian neighbours to start off. We will see though. A320 and b737 order book are really long right now, so that might make some airlines interested in buying the unproven C919 or C-series aircraft.

Click to expand...

all markets are difficult, Embraer or Bombardier did not have an empty niche, the competition was there from companies like Gulfstream, Antonov, Yakolev, Fokker, BAe, Dassault., Tupolev.

The Yakolev Yak-40 was widely made but obsolete by the time the ERJ-145 entered production, the BAe-146 was also an aircraft that was there since 1983 and the same was there for the Fokker 70 and 28 and the CRJ-100 flew even before the ERJ-145.

Any aircraft to succeed needs always to have the best technology and the cheapest operating price to increase profits by passenger flown, the success of Brazil Embraer is related not the niche Market, but the capabilities of their aircraft and the price of production and operating costs.

That will apply to to C919, in order to break into the airline markets it needs to best the competition and make alliances to help international sales

b787 said:

Embraer is not owned by the Brazilian government neither it is purely Brazilian



Embraer is Brazilian but also American, it has also European partners so the reason Embraer can enter easily in the US and European Market is easy to understand

Click to expand...

And your point being? You can argue boeing is not pure american too.

The reality is the Brazilian government gave plenty of help to Embraer over the years. An obvious example is vendor financing (something Canadian government does as well) mentioned in the paper i linked earlier. The government provides the loans to the buyers of aircrafts with very favourable terms and take all the risks. If the buyer defaults, the government takes a hit while Embraer can still book a profit.

In the real world, it is not always the one with the best technology wins. Betamax vs. VHS, remember? A company's fortune is determined by a LOT of factors, technology is only a part of it. In the air plane business, politics play a huge part of it

vincent said:

And your point being? You can argue boeing is not pure american too.

The reality is the Brazilian government gave plenty of help to Embraer over the years. An obvious example is vendor financing (something Canadian government does as well) mentioned in the paper i linked earlier. The government provides the loans to the buyers of aircrafts with very favourable terms and take all the risks. If the buyer defaults, the government takes a hit while Embraer can still book a profit.

In the real world, it is not always the one with the best technology wins. Betamax vs. VHS, remember? A company's fortune is determined by a LOT of factors, technology is only a part of it. In the air plane business, politics play a huge part of it

Click to expand...

You argument is easy to break, tell me how did Embraer was help by the Brazilian government so LOT would buy E-170s? how did it help when Aeromexico bought E-170s?
Tell me how did the Brazilian Government help Embraer when Air Canada or Japan airlines bought E-170? how did they help when Estonian air bough E-170?

you are dodging the question, Embraer has made alliances because aircraft are expensive, so they turned to american investors for around 45% of ownership of Embraer for finance, and by using western made parts the certification for the Embraer jets was easier.

C919 did a similar thing, same sukhoi by using western parts, however the question is the price of the jets, the support and very important the design in it self, E-170 satisfies what airliners need.

I am not saying C919 can not do it, they can do it but they have to do it by the design it self, by satisfying the needs the market demands and Western Markets always want some industrial share and the international market requires a good aircraft, C919 needs to stand by it self as a design that satisfies the needs of not only Chinese state owned airliners but foreign ones.

C919 is going to succeed.

That success is going to be built, IMHO, initially on a very strong foundation of Chinese orders where they will develop the aircraft into a top Chinese carrier aircraft.

They will spread out from there.

If they do nothing more than fill to meet the Chinese market, and extend it to other Asian markets where they fly to from China, they aircraft will be a very strong success.

Then, based on that strong foundation, they will see expansion.

How far? Who knows? Time will tell.

But it will already be a success IMHO based on what it is going to do in China and direct connections into other parts of Asia.

b787 said:

all markets are difficult, Embraer or Bombardier did not have an empty niche, the competition was there from companies like Gulfstream, Antonov, Yakolev, Fokker, BAe, Dassault., Tupolev.

The Yakolev Yak-40 was widely made but obsolete by the time the ERJ-145 entered production, the BAe-146 was also an aircraft that was there since 1983 and the same was there for the Fokker 70 and 28 and the CRJ-100 flew even before the ERJ-145.

Any aircraft to succeed needs always to have the best technology and the cheapest operating price to increase profits by passenger flown, the success of Brazil Embraer is related not the niche Market, but the capabilities of their aircraft and the price of production and operating costs.

That will apply to to C919, in order to break into the airline markets it needs to best the competition and make alliances to help international sales

Click to expand...

well, airbus and boeing have a lot more money and r&d available, which makes it harder for new entrant. Even someone with a lot of experience like bombardier in producing CRJ series is having a real rough go at it with C-series. Once Airbus saw a possible challenge, they came out with NEO series by using a new engine and sharklets and some changes and voila, C-series gets crushed. It's much easier to get into the regional airliner market where embraer is at. There is a reason why all the new entrants try to compete in that crowded 70 to 90 seat segments rather than trying to get to 135 to 200 seat segment.

If a plane doesn't get FAA certification does that mean that that plane is not allow to land in US airports ?

Franklin said:

If a plane doesn't get FAA certification does that mean that that plane is not allow to land in US airports ?

Click to expand...

Yes they are not allowed to land in US, and you can't fly the routes within the US air space as well.

And many other nations are applying FAA rules in their own air space. So with-out FAA certification, a passenger jet will have very limited choice of international routes to fly.

b787 said:

Sorry you are just dodging the issue, Embraer for example built the ERj-145 mostly for foreign airliners, in fact the EMB-130 and EMB-120 were mostly export aircraft.

Click to expand...

What issue I am dodging? Do you know what I was trying to say in my original post?

b787 said:

The C919 is built under a soviet style philosophy because it is not really competing in the export Market, the Soviet airliners once they were open to export under international and western rules were not able to compete, Embraer was different, once they stop building under the domestic market philosophy, they succeed.

Click to expand...

What makes you think that COMAC is not aiming to enter international and western market? What is your base to claim C919 is following Soviet practice?
I have stated that COMAC has received 30 orders from abroad. That is the very sign that COMAC intends to go abroad.
You are actually dodging my statement of C919's 30 international/western orders.

b787 said:

Now i am not saying that that is a weakness completely, the Chinese are trying to secure an internal number to protect their aviation industry, however from the point of view of success the C919 has not achieved at any moment the needed none Chinese and private ownership a true successful program needs like B-737 or A-320 have achieved by being exported in none local markets.

Click to expand...

C919 has not even made the first fight yet. Is it a bit too early and unfair to say "C919 has not achieved......"?

b787 said:

Of course i am not saying it will not succeed, perhaps the aircraft will be later exported and get the level ERJ-145 got for Embraer, but if you notice most of the buyers of C919 are Chinese banks, which are highly vulnerable to losses in their investment in the aircraft itself and the airliners they control, because basically they are buying their own aircraft

Click to expand...

The "most buyers" are not banks, they are airliners. Theses airliners are not owned by COMAC in any way. Both COMAC and Chinese airliners are commercial companies independent from each others. Where do you get the impression that they are the same entity?

You seems to project the Soviet (which is also Chinese before 1980) image onto China of 2015 and draw all your conclusions from that base. Isn't it time for you to update your knowledge of China? It has been more than 35 years, things change, the world has changed, China has experienced the biggest change than the rest of the world.

tphuang said:

well, airbus and boeing have a lot more money and r&d available, which makes it harder for new entrant. Even someone with a lot of experience like bombardier in producing CRJ series is having a real rough go at it with C-series. Once Airbus saw a possible challenge, they came out with NEO series by using a new engine and sharklets and some changes and voila, C-series gets crushed. It's much easier to get into the regional airliner market where embraer is at. There is a reason why all the new entrants try to compete in that crowded 70 to 90 seat segments rather than trying to get to 135 to 200 seat segment.

Click to expand...

That is not true, the reason why Airbus and Boeing make more A-320 and B737 than B47s and A-380s is related to the Market, most people will fly shorter routes.

Learjet 85 was cancelled because the price per seat of this type of aircraft is high, it means a ERJ-145 will be sold in larger numbers than a Phenom, why? a Phenom is a smaller jet thus it means fewer people can afford to pay the price of operation of a Phenom than of a ERJ-145.

Bombardier can not compete with Airbus simply because they do not have the aerospace background Europe has.

Airbus is backed by well established companies that were making from Fokker 70s, Comets, and Caravelles, in few words they already have the market, experience and costumers for their jets.

Airbus was not a new company in terms of experience, the companies that merged were already making concord, Comets, Fokker 70s etc etc.

Bombardier did not start as an aircraft company, but it started making snowmobiles, so in order to gain customers they started with turboprop aircraft which require less fuel (jet engines consume more fuel) thus the price of each seat is lower than in a jet.

Embraer was the same, their first aircraft were turboprops, small ones.

To exemplify if you open a business you have to make profits, all business start small and if profits grow they become larger.

Embraer said they were not going to make a larger aircraft, because the market was over crowed, with the MRJ, MS-21, C919, C-series plus the A-320 and B-737, you have several countries trying to fill the same niche, some of these companies will fail.


Plus probably you do not know Embraer has connections with US and European aerospace industry that make parts for both Boeing and Airbus as well as for Embraer, so you do not know that basically the same companies that make money with a A-320 make money with a ERJ-145.

So Embraer will keep making E-170s because companies like Daher or Aernova or Goodrich or Honeywell make aircraft parts for Airbus, Boeing, Embraer or Bombardier, so in few words the reason why Russia and China and even Japan will have a hard time selling their jets is based upon the fact the western companies are themselves owned by the same people . and they share the spoils regardless they have offices in Sao Paulo, Otawa, Washington, London or Madrid,

taxiya said:

What issue I am dodging? Do you know what I was trying to say in my original post?

What makes you think that COMAC is not aiming to enter international and western market? What is your base to claim C919 is following Soviet practice?
I have stated that COMAC has received 30 orders from abroad. That is the very sign that COMAC intends to go abroad.
You are actually dodging my statement of C919's 30 international/western orders.

C919 has not even made the first fight yet. Is it a bit too early and unfair to say "C919 has not achieved......"?

The "most buyers" are not banks, they are airliners. Theses airliners are not owned by COMAC in any way. Both COMAC and Chinese airliners are commercial companies independent from each others. Where do you get the impression that they are the same entity?

You seems to project the Soviet (which is also Chinese before 1980) image onto China of 2015 and draw all your conclusions from that base. Isn't it time for you to update your knowledge of China? It has been more than 35 years, things change, the world has changed, China has experienced the biggest change than the rest of the world.

Click to expand...

If you know how Embraer or Bombardier have developed, and you know a bit about Tupolev, you can understand the Chinese logic and Path with C919 and even the Japanese MRJ philosophy.

Let us start with Bombardier, Embraer, and Sukhoi.
These companies are backed by medium size economies, economies in the range of USD 1.5-3.5 trillion dollars.

Russia, Canada and Brazil have relatively small domestic markets, thus Brazil and Canada needed exports to create their domestic aircraft industries, same is Russia.

MRJ is backed by a large company that makes not only aircraft but many other products, and has a relatively big domestic market.

Embraer aircraft are mainly bought in the US and Europe, thus they have good connections with the western countries in the financial and industrial areas and Brazil is not their main market.

Tupolev and Sukhoi have bad relations with the west, a relatively small domestic Market, so Tu-330 failed and Sukhoi decided to go for cheaper planes to reduce risks, so SSJ fills the same gap E-170, but it will be bought mostly in Russia with a few aircraft in the West.

C919 is backed by a very large economy, in PPP GDP as large as Europe the US, thus the Market is big, C919 is supposedly to be a Chinese counterpart of B-737 and A-320.
China is betting domestic orders will justify the program, however most of its customers are Chinese owned airliners that are backed directly by the Chinese government.

Here you can see a difference in Philosophy between Comac and Embraer, Embraer jets needed USA and European orders once they got them their jets became sold around the world.

Comac is betting Chinese orders will follow international orders, the Chinese orders are backed by the Chinese Government banks, same is the Sukhoi Project, but Sukhoi needs export orders more than C919 or ARj-21.


I can not say if it will succeed or not as a program, only that i am sure China will be a large player for sure either with a Partnership or by it self but about the program it self is not an export oriented program in the same way Embraer programs are, they might win international orders but now they have not really make an impact beyond China.