I don't think anyone is arguing about the fact that sub 500km routes in China are much better for HSR. I am specifically talking about the routes that are not best optimized for HSR - namely, the routes between the few major economic hubs in China - Beijing/Tianjin - Greater Bay Region - Yangtze River Delta - Wuhan - Changsha - Xi'an - Chengdu/Chongqing. Most of regions are more than 500km away and if you go on WeChat and check, HSR (namely the G-series trains) is routinely more expensive than flights for the busiest flight routes. So the notion that "HSR is cheaper than flying" doesn't hold up true for the busiest routes.
COMAC C919
- Thread starter Deino
- Start date
I don't think anyone is arguing about the fact that sub 500km routes in China are much better for HSR. I am specifically talking about the routes that are not best optimized for HSR - namely, the routes between the few major economic hubs in China - Beijing/Tianjin - Greater Bay Region - Yangtze River Delta - Wuhan - Changsha - Xi'an - Chengdu/Chongqing. Most of regions are more than 500km away and if you go on WeChat and check, HSR (namely the G-series trains) is routinely more expensive than flights for the busiest flight routes. So the notion that "HSR is cheaper than flying" doesn't hold up true for the busiest routes.
It's unlikely full service carriers will adapt to operate that way. You don't see Delta operate like that for its domestic flights.
Keep in mind that airliners do help airlines and pitch ideas to airlines on seating arrangement and such based on what the airline itself wants. In the case of Ryanair, they worked with Boeing to design that awful MAX200 configuration, because people that fly Ryanair don't mind getting packed like Sardines.
In this case, C919 customers are looking for the classic two cabin configuration from C919, so it was designed for that type of layout. I don't know enough about the Chinese market to appreciate how much of the first class cabin is paid for vs upgrades, but their FC cabin is quite small in MU's case (just 8 seat). I assume there is quite a bit of rewarding loyalty factor in there.
I don't see any reason why COMAC cannot work with suppliers to get those flex toilet cabin to work in C919 or to get flexible emergency exit, but all of this takes time. It took a while for Airbus to design A320 series to where it is today. Keep in mind that customization also slows down the production process. There is a reason right now Airbus is having trouble delivering aircraft on time. And they are the best in the world in supply chain management. There is simply no need for COMAC to go for that segment of the market when they still haven't got the basics right.
Airliners are always looking to sign on blue chip airlines. Making MU happy is a lot more important than making a startup LCC happy. From MU's config choices, empty weight/pax on C919 is competitive with A320NEO. This is not what people should be focusing their time on.
Another thing, since I noticed you just updated. If you look at PEK to SZX, which is a huge trunk route
It's mostly wide body aircraft. Chinese airlines are operating very far from ULCC model on their busy routes. In America, you'd see all A321NEO or MAX9 on these type of routes.
Strange to rely on social media for the information instead of personal experience. I traveled between Beijing and Xi'an on HSR a few years ago and it was cheaper than I traveled by air, of course not much. The routes that you listed are around 1000km and yet still attractive to me at least.
You should actually ask why do people still take HSR even if it is more expensive than flight? Why would the airlines not raise the prices if it is so desirable? After all, the price is only there if people are willing to pay for it.
To repeat myself, I only mentioned 500km and short haul, never said HSR is cheaper than flying "in any distance". Unless you regard 1000km as short haul?
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No you don't because the point isn't even that the A320 does better in a ULCC environment. In the present context it's merely a notional configuration to compare aircraft on an apples-to-apples basis. If you don't adjust for cabin config and use real-world layouts, you'll miss the forest for the trees:
Yep, and in the A320 8 of those seats are business class, given the identical cabin length and the emergency exit configuration, this number is inevitably going to be either 4 or zero in the C919. Providing the airline can fill both to the same load factor, the Airbus will end up more lucrative, because with a higher fraction of business class passengers the revenue per seat is much higher. Oftentimes you will even find the same type at the same airline operating in two or more different cabin configurations, depending on what routes they serve on. Premium-heavy connections with lots of business travelers will be flown by aircraft with bigger business class sections to take advantage of the customer base.
Using real-world cabin layouts to compare aircraft efficiencies is too fraught with complexities - the high-density config is a much more informative yardstick. We're comparing two aircraft, not two airlines or two business models.
The same way the A350-900ULR does, for instance. Yes, it got a 5t MTOW boost originally - but soon after Airbus started offering the bog standard -900 with clearance to 280t too. The reality is, structurally both aircraft are exactly the same nowadays, vanilla -900s even have the additional tank volume in the centre wing box ready to use. The ULR is purely a paper (certification & load limit) variant - Airbus even explicitly touts the flexibility of re-certifying as a basic -900 at the stroke of a pen.
So? That's just the business class idea transferred to the automotive world, really. So long as the customer is willing to pay more for the privilege than the extra dead weight causes in additional direct & opportunity costs, it works.
Sure there is. The A320 can do everything the C919 can do (i.e. operate less dense cabins), but it can also do things the C919 cannot do - or at least not as well. By making more efficient use of cabin real estate, Airbus is able to cater to more business models than the C919. And that, as mentioned above, is precisely the point: we are comparing aircraft, not markets or business models.
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same number of business class seat and 8 more Y seating for C919. Because guess what, C919 is a little longer and MU prefers to have exit rows for Y+ or preferred seating or whatever else it wants. That's where the Chinese market is.
And yes, I know very well same airline operates different cabin configurations of the same fleet type. Because you know, I spent 5 years just looking at this stuff in my spare time and calculating CASM/RASM for North American Airlines.
You know this because so far you have only seen one customer (China eastern airline) flying one configuration of C919 while A320 has been flying for decades with tens if not hundreds customers with many of them requested their own configurations?
These configurations are market and business model determined. Taking out one of many variants of A320 to compare with the only known variant of C919 is exactly comparing business models.
Stranger for you to use your personal experience a few years ago (like...is China supposed to not have changed at all?) as opposed to looking at the up-to-date prices for travel.
FYI, WeChat can be used to search/buy tickets - which I used to research ticket prices for my upcoming trip to China - if you didn't know that, have a look - it might help you learn a thing or two. (Edit: on second thought, it actually makes sense for you to be ignorant of this because WeChat functionality has changed rapidly in the "last few years")
Did I ever limit my comment to short haul? Do ULCCs only do short haul flights?
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No, I know this because the ACAP documents for both aircraft say so. Don't shoot the messenger, I'm effectively just relaying what the OEMs are saying about their own products. You are correct to point out that the wide variety of cabin configs in operational service makes a comparison very difficult - which is exactly why it's so useful to revert to the maximum density layout for both and extrapolate from there. Anything else is apt to be fatally skewed one way or another, with considerations such as routes, airline business model and others entering the equation. By cherry picking you could prove basically any completely misleading claim you like. Case in point coming up below...
How so? The (hypothetical) business model is the same for both in this case: ULCC. So we've controlled for that aspect and are comparing like for like. It allows deductions to be made about suitability for other business models though, because it shows which aircraft has more cabin area available for seating. That's inevitably the one which will be able to adapt to a wider variety of airline business models, because it can accommodate the greater range of cabin configurations.
Ok, that is surprising, but kind of proves my point that using anything other than the max. density configuration to compare cabin efficiency potential is hopelessly flawed. Not sure what's going on in MU's A320 cabin that it has fewer economy seats - maybe the pitch in either the economy section or the business class (or both) is larger, or one of the galleys is bigger, or there is a wardrobe somewhere that isn't present in the C919. Without an accurate cabin map for the C919 we can only speculate, and that's exactly the problem with doing the comparison this way.
Ultimately there is no escaping the fact that while the C919 is longer *externally* (increasing wetted area), the cabin length available for seating is the same as on the A320 essentially down to an inch:
Yes, the interior is longer too, but the additional space is all in front of the forward doors, so cannot be taken advantage of for seating. Again, this picture shows the maximum density seat maps from the respective ACAPs overlaid, so these statements are not up for debate unless you wish to argue that you know more than the OEMs do.
MU A320, 8J, 150Y, full catering at the back
CA A320 8J, 150Y, full catering at the back
CZ A320 8J, 24Y+, 120Y, full catering at the back
Now, let's take a look at US airlines
B6, A320 42Y+, 120Y, space flex toilets at the back
DL, A320 16J, 18Y+, 126Y, space flex toilets at the back
So what does this tell us? In America, it's okay for airlines to put space flex toilets at the back with minimal catering area, since passengers are conditioned to accept just getting a cup of water and a cookie for a 5 hour flight.
In China, you have to be serving hot meals for that kind of flight and people don't want to use space flex toilets. Could that change? Sure, but C919 was designed based first and foremost on the requirements of domestic airlines. Once domestic airlines desire more ways to squish people in, then COMAC can also work on designing space flex toilets, flex emergency exits (A321NEO well known to have flexible L2 door IIRC).
But at this point, C919 has a lot of other issues to attend to. This really is not a major concern for C919.
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