China’s New Large Jet: Threat to Boeing, Airbus? – The Wall Street Journal “What’s New” Podcast
I sat for a 5m27s interview with the WSJ talking about China’s new COMAC C919 which will compete with the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 series aircraft. This airplane was just rolled out, though first flight is still a ways away. Normally you’d laugh at a new entrant in this market, but this is China. And if China wants to succeed, China will make it succeed.
Cranky on the Web – Talking Chinese Competition for Boeing and Airbus
5 comments on “Cranky on the Web – Talking Chinese Competition for Boeing and Airbus”
I could see the Chinese government leveraging its muscle in places like Africa to get local airlines there to buy the aircraft, and even parts of Central / South America (Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador) and Middle East (particularly Iran), but I can’t see EU-states and North American states getting behind this
Well China could made all airlines in their country switch to the jets, but they would have to give them away since that would be a huge drain on the wallet to dump all the Boeing/Airbus aircraft and BUY new China made craft.
China and Delta are alike in some ways, both think they are the only game in town and want everyone to bow to what they want.
“Normally you’d laugh at a new entrant in this market, but this is China.”
I think you got that backwards. New entrants are welcome, and there is a huge pie to share, but no one (rightly so) expects China to make a quality airliner. Lockheed would make a killing. The best China have ever done is reverse-engineering of western types (see ARJ-21). This bird will only appeal to Chinese operators due to gov’t pressure. The story will be different in 2050, but for now they’re mostly a joke. It looks like they won’t ever get type-certification outside of China anyway.
People laughed when the Europeans decided to try and launch their own aircraft manufacturer to compete against Douglas, McDonnell and Boeing, but look where they are now.
I think that unlike the Bombardier CSeries, this has the potential to be successful.
No, they didn’t. And only the name Airbus was new (and laughable). This is a consortium of established and widely successful manufacturers. They had over 6 decades of aircraft design and production experience, including the first jetliner. China has copyright infringement and cheap labor.
Also, despite the rough start, the CSeries will be a huge success. The economics are too good. It’s one thing to say the CS probably won’t return a lot of Canadian $ on investment, or have the opinion that it won’t sell thousands, but to say it doesn’t even have POTENTIAL to be successful is idiocy.