COMAC C919

Building a viable commercial aircraft business has never been easy, not for the well established companies, let alone the new and inexperienced ones like COMAC. It's not just about technology, which have its various challenges, but also more about system integration, testing, certification, and maintenance and customer support. ARJ-21 was delayed like, what? over a decade according to the original schedule. I expect C919 would also be behind the schedule, probably not as bad as ARJ-21. Still, it looks like the expectation of first delivery to customer by the end of this year is still overly optimistic.

They just need to continue to push through all the blocks and barriers.

Right now everyone in the airliner industry is under the microscope. Boeing has the Max more or less sorted. However Both the 787 and A350 are having issues with their composite hulls. So slowing down the 919 seems actually to be a good idea to make sure they don’t have the same issues.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

Right now everyone in the airliner industry is under the microscope. Boeing has the Max more or less sorted. However Both the 787 and A350 are having issues with their composite hulls. So slowing down the 919 seems actually to be a good idea to make sure they don’t have the same issues.

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They are not "slowing down" for this reason.

Pushing it out by this year would have created a competitive albeit slightly outdated aircraft.

If they delay it by say 3 to 5 years it will really be almost obsolete.

sndef888 said:

Pushing it out by this year would have created a competitive albeit slightly outdated aircraft.

If they delay it by say 3 to 5 years it will really be almost obsolete.

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In that case they might as well scrap the Western suppliers and spend another 10-20 years building the plane from Chinese suppliers, or at least where Chinese suppliers can easily be substituted if necessary.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

However Both the 787 and A350 are having issues with their composite hulls. So slowing down the 919 seems actually to be a good idea to make sure they don’t have the same issues.

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I don't think the 919 is slowing down for the same reasons as the 787 and A350 did

Most likely is that COMAC just doesn't have the necessary experience for it to pass certification tests which is why it is so slow.
You can't just rush certification, COMAC will have to work hard while gradually accumulating experience. This will take years

I never said they were. I was saying it might be advantageous. To take the time and go over the composites.

sndef888 said:

Pushing it out by this year would have created a competitive albeit slightly outdated aircraft.

If they delay it by say 3 to 5 years it will really be almost obsolete.

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The commercial plane product cycle is about 10-15 years long, not 3-5. Purchases are also not all about the quality of the technology but business economics. Even before the C919 went into certification it was already a plane that was mostly going to get purchases from domestic airlines, with some interest from developing markets. And even with this delay that hasn’t changed. The value of this plane was never to be a smashing commercial success or to be competitive to state of the art but to provide a serious entry point to jumpstart commercial industry, to have a project that could teach and develop necessary industry process and practices. Once they’ve cleared this last certification hurdle it will be much easier for them to iterate and update the design as needed. They could even shift current C919 orders towards future variants if the timeline makes sense to do that.

the C919 project was launched in the heydays of globalisation. the project was compromised by a bunch of comprador minded guys from the beginning. the developing team needs a overhaul. develop a 737 size jetliner is not a big deal as some guys trying to make out.

LesAdieux said:

the project was compromised by a bunch of comprador minded guys from the beginning.

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This is a serious accusation that you need to back it up.

LesAdieux said:

develop a 737 size jetliner is not a big deal as some guys trying to make out.

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Maybe not a big deal to Boeing and Airbus. But to China it seems to be one. Or are you suggesting that all the delays are because of sabotage by the "compradors"?