Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also let’s be clear if the C919 actually works out they will be a serious competitor. The market for wide body aircraft is the one that captures all the imagination and attention but the narrow body sales are the bread and butter. That's a pretty large if. Head west a bit to Russia and see how they're doing in the international market. The Sukhoi SuperJet is, by most accounts, a great plane. Sukhoi managed to sell to…
Sukhoi and Comac are still hugely dependent on the west to build these planes. Avionics and engines especially. Boeing and Airbus don’t build their own engines. I don’t expect COMAC to try that in their first rodeo. The metallurgy required to build a modern turbofan engine is incredibly exotic — outside of France, England, and the US it's simply not there. If you’re betting on metallurgy to be the barrier to keep wes…
It's worked out well for the past 70 or so years. Industrial espionage can only go so far, that's more or less why the Russians dominate the rocket market.
So they have gone back to using the material used to build every other narrow body plane on the market in this size category. I admit, a new design should use carbon fiber, but given that no one else is yet...
The MC21 and C-series use carbon fiber wings and the MC21 also uses a CF wing box. Comac is targeting planes from 20-30 years ago. Even if it were perfectly reliable, it's nowhere near competitive with what's on the market now. If that extra few percent of fuel burn weren't important there'd be no market for the NEO or MAX.
First off, airlines have purchased a ton of E175 family aircraft.
That's the entire point. Without that scale support becomes that much more difficult and expensive.
Third off, COMAC can focus on the Chinese market to start and take it region at a time slowly expanding across Asia.
Yeah they've tried. The ARJ went over like a lead balloon. The domestic airlines haven't warmed up to Comac, and it's highly unlikely the C919 will move the needle much.
From there South Asia and SEA is easy and both are big markets
With a strong anti-Chinese sentiment (Malaysia, Vietnam). Perhaps more importantly SEA sees a lot of short-range widebody service which the C919 doesn't help with.
Russia would welcome it with open arms
Russia would welcome a direct competitor to its homegrown offerings? That seems unlikely for the C919 and unlikely even if we're talking about a hypothetical plane built in a Sino-Russian joint venture. Although why would they partner? Russian avionics aren't going to be accepted internationally, Russian engines are woefully inefficient. Comac struggled with the Ukranian wings on the ARJ. Maybe a carbon fuselage, but are the Russians anywhere near being able to do that?
and then they can take a whack at the middle eastern market
The shrinking middle east market? Emirates/flyDubai (who's got both Airbus and Boeing wrapped around their fingers is scaling back their growth (to put it delicately).
and also be competitive anywhere Airbus and Boeing aren’t really playing that hard anyway. (Africa, etc.)
How welcoming will Africa be as they slowly come to terms with how screwed they are by the Belt & Road initiative? Sure, maybe CCP applies pressure to make sales. That's not going to translate to any sort of European or American success though.
Let’s see Boeing deliver the MAX again first.
I suspect that's not going to happen.
I think it would be easy to win a bet that COMAC delivers C919 to commercial airline customers before Boeing delivers a new narrow body design to replace the 737 family.
Boeing began working on a 737 replacement before the MAX program was begun, meanwhile Comac pushed the EIS target for the C919 back to 2022. As Aviation Week pointed out last year the C919 needs about 33 hours per month of flight testing for a 2021 EIS, in practice they're seeing about 5 hours per month. So, maybe.