Has BOEING met its MATCH?!

CoolMax c919 will soon enter service in China but is this aircraft really a threat to the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320 is China about to destroy the Boeing Airbus duopoly stay tuned unless you're an AV geek like me or you're watching this from China you might not even have heard of kolmac and the c919 comac stands for commercial aircraft Corporation and it is the Chinese state-owned aircraft manufacturer now companies in China have previously done a lot of subcontracting work for both Boeing and the Airbus the European manufacturer has for example an end assembly line in China while Boeing relies on Chinese facilities to convert many of its passenger Jets to freighters in the past McDonald Douglas has also used an assembly line for the MD80 and the md-90 in China but then came comac's first homegrown aircraft the arj-21 arj stands for advanced Regional Jet this aircraft which bore a striking resemblance to the md-90 by the way first flew in 2008 around two years of the Boeing stock producing the 717 which was the last variant of the md-90 family now obviously this generated quite a bit of controversy since some McDonald Douglas tooling might have been involved in the arj-21's manufacturing According to some sources but in itself this aircraft didn't really represent a threat to Boeing or Airbus since it didn't rival any of their aircraft in production at the time the arj21 is still in production today with comac making about 21 to 25 of them per year on average but comac c919 is a completely different story this yet is much closer to the big selling single aisle jets that Boeing and Airbus are currently producing it is about the same length and has the same cabin height and width as the Airbus A320 to power it comac shows a version of the CFM Lee pendant an engine already in use in Boeing 737 Maxes and the Airbus A320 Neo families now we still don't know for sure exactly how many actual orders co-mark has on his books for this aircraft early in the aircraft development coma claimed having at least 380 orders but it wasn't clear if all of those were actually firm orders the current estimates of fermortas range between 170 to 300. publicly Commack has stated that it sees a potential of around 2 000 sales of the c919 over the next couple of decades and we will take a closer look on just how realistic that's actually is but in any case Boeing and Airbus are both taking the c919 seriously China is an enormous market for both manufacturers and losing it could be a disaster for any of them actually China's Market has expanded so rapidly in the last few years that in theory at least the c919 could become moderate success only by domestic sales inside of China and because of this the CEO of Airbus has been on record saying that he expects coma to break the Boeing Airbus aircraft duopoly Boeing is even more worried because of the trade restrictions and political tensions Boeing feels that they are already losing China as a market China was the first country to ground the 737 Max and so far Airlines there have been still not returned the type to service even though that could change pretty soon last summer a number of Chinese Airlines announced a huge order for nearly 300 A320 family aircraft from Airbus and in previous years China maintained a more or less even balance between Airbus and Boeing orders but this time it's clear that Boeing is not expecting to receive a matching order instead they made a statement expressing their disappointment that geopolitical differences continue to constrain the U.S aircraft exports China Eastern will take delivery of their first c919 very soon it might actually already have happened when you watch this so with the c919 about to enter service could this actually be the end for Boeing in China now that China can make their own narrow body jet is Boeing permanently going to be locked out of China's market and could both Boeing and Airbus start losing market share to comac even outside of China well not quite and I'll tell you why after this very short message from my sponsor now if you want to learn more about comac the aviation industry or simply keep up to date with what's going on in the world I highly recommend today's sponsor ground news they are a news platform developed by a former NASA engineer who lets you compare articles from more than 50 000 sources from around the world and across the political Spectrum ground news gives you the breaking news as they happen but they also show you the sources and the political leaning of those sources and this is really important because the same facts can be presented in completely different ways depending on who's reporting them let me show you how it works as you can see here ground news first gives you an overview of what the story contains and then it provides you with different news outlets who are working on the story right now they also show you the political leaning the bias distribution and any potential blind spots that there might be on the topic I've been using this website and app for months and I can't recommend it enough and right now they're giving you guys the mentor now viewers 35 off so you can get access to it for as little as one dollar month which is definitely worth so go to ground.news Mentor now to try it out for absolutely free or take advantage of this one-time offer to support a small team of media Outsiders who are working to make the news more transparent for all of us now back to the video Comax c919 got its certification from the Civil Aviation Administration of China or caac in September this year 2022. but comac still needed a production certificate which in most parts of the world is issued at the same time or just a few days after the certification but in the case of comac's first aircraft the arj21 it took a full one and a half year to enter service after getting its certification so Aviation analysts weren't quite sure still aren't quite sure what to expect when it comes to the c919 but it turns out that the c919 actually got its production certificate on the 29th of November of 2022 and the goal is for China Eastern to put their first c919 into service before the end of 2022 so things are definitely speeding up all of this seems to compound Boeing's fears but things are not quite that simple to understand why we need to look a bit closer at some details of the c919 because despite its similarity with the Airbus A320 there are some key differences first of all according to many analysts the aircraft is heavier than an A320 so even though it has an up-to-date CFM leap engine efficiency Wise It's probably closer to the older generation of a320s the c919 also has significantly shorter range compared to both the A320 and the Boeing 737 interestingly the arj21 is also a bit heavier than the comparable md-90 now Cormac could possibly do something about these shortcomings at a later date but at least for now these efficiency issues mean that the c919 isn't getting any orders from outside of China and that's a problem for comac because their estimate for 2 000 potential sales included the international market as well there has been some Market interest in the aircraft from other countries in Asia and Africa but there hasn't been any orders so far but as I mentioned before China's Home Market is huge a third of Boeing's production actually goes to China so as a new entrant coma could just focus on the domestic market right well Scott Hamilton from liham news has looked at this in some details and by the way check out Liam news we have a link to them in the description they are awesome now Scott looked at how many single aisle aircraft Chinese Airlines have today how quickly they are replacing them and how quickly comac can produce its own yet in China and the point is research boiled down to was that Chinese Airlines have far too many planes and are replacing them far too quickly for them to be able to cope without Boeing that's even if they continue to buy aircraft from Airbus at the present rate Airbus has a pretty full order book as it looks today anyway realistically comac will do well if they manage to produce around five c919s per month and that's from 2027 or so when the production has begun to settle into a stable pace that production rate does not support sales of 2000 aircraft over two decades of course China's industry has proven repeatedly that it has a great potential for scaling up mass production when it needs to but the problem for comac is that the rate of production of the c919 doesn't only depend on comac's own means Cormac and its suppliers within China can increase production capacity for the airframe itself but the engines the avionics the landing gear and many other Key Systems well they're important so comac is dependent on foreign suppliers for these parts also these days Boeing and Airbus are facing production delays because of supply chain slowdowns and since these are the same suppliers that comac is working with well then they are likely subject to the same supply chain problems as well and by the way when it comes to Conventional all-metal aircraft like the c919 the Airbus A320 and the 737 the bare airframe meaning the fuselage and the wings only amount to around 30 of the total cost of the aircraft this means that these foreign supplied parts make up over two-thirds of the cost of a new c919 so if you thought that perhaps the Chinese manufacturer can compete with Boeing and Airbus on cost like by being cheaper that most likely is not going to be the case now when it comes to suppliers there is also another rather controversial side of the comac c919 story there have been some serious allegations about Espionage relating to key components of the c919 in the United States and also elsewhere there have been multiple arrests of what appears to be agents of Chinese institutions in foreign companies that Supply components for the c919 the alleged aim of this Espionage was to obtain information that could make it easier to reverse engineer these important components in November this year a Chinese National was convicted of Espionage in the United States and sent us to 20 years in jail this conviction and other similar arrests involved Espionage on companies like General Electric Aviation saffron Honeywell and other key c919 suppliers the similarity of the c919 to the Airbus A320 Neo has also given rise to similar Espionage theories because Airbus does have an end assembly line for the air 320 Neo in China after all and there's also a matter of trade restrictions which have repeatedly threatened the program at one point it looked like the United States might stop General Electric Aviation who along with Francis saffron make the CFM leap engines from supplying these engines to comac in the end that sale actually did went through but remember what I said about the c919 being heavier than the A320 well a good proportion of that weight difference seems to involve the CFM leap one surely engines that they're using which are about 800 kilos heavier than the leap one alpha in the A320 Neo According to some sources but we haven't been able to determine if that difference has to do with the engines themselves or their installation on the aircraft now there are plans for a future Chinese engine for the c919 in the acae cj1000 alpha there is very little information about this engine for now but it is not believed to have flown yet it is expected to enter service no earlier than 2030 as it looks right now but even after that engine is certified China will still have a lot of other components to develop and certify if comac wants an old Chinese aircraft that can fly internationally and all of that is going to take a lot of time now in a previous video I talked about how Russia's UAC will struggle to replace all the non-russian ports in this new mc21 and in its existing Sukhoi superjets and this is actually a similar problem but of course without the sanctions comac will of course be able to continue to buy these parts from companies in the United States and in Europe but if they want to increase production to such a level that they could replace Boeing they would need to figure out how to design build and search certified everything locally so in practice the c919 is unlikely to completely replace Boeing inside of China at least not by itself but for both comac and the caac this aircraft could still be a big step in that direction in the longer term comac initially wanted the c919 to have a composite wing and Wing box like the Russian mc21 but it turned out that comac didn't have the technology to do that quite yet but that might not be the case for its next design finally there's also the question of building a working support network for this new aircraft this has been a serious obstacle for this suku super jet for example which actually did make some sales outside Russia it received a lot of complaints for low dispatch reliability mostly because of problems getting access to spare parts and again the c919 could become the aircraft that allows comac and its Chinese subsidiaries to learn how to build such a support network and after they have established that coma could become a serious threat for Airbus and Boeing internationally another decade or more down the line especially if they keep improving their designs but of course Airbus and Boeing will move ahead in that time too with their own Innovations and hopefully they will come up with some pretty cool designs of their own now check out this video next which I know you're gonna like or binge on this playlist if you like what I'm doing I hope that I have earned a subscription from you and if you want to support my work then consider becoming a part of my lovely Patron crew or by ourselves emerge have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mentour Now!

Views: 454,552

Keywords: china, boeing, storytelling, full episodes, investigation, documentary, entertainment, mentour pilot, mentour now

Id: wOn0GcYKSUM

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 17 2022