Insight: The COMAC C919 is a Game Changer

The first COMAC C919 has been delivered to China Eastern

and will soon enter commercial service. While the ramp-up will be slow, COMAC now has orders for more than 1,100 C919 aircraft from Chinese airlines and leasing companies.

For the West, that means 1,100 aircraft that Boeing or Airbus won’t produce, which would be valued at roughly $100 billion at list prices. The potential market for the COMAC C919 is just beginning to be felt and could double should China seek to mandate the C919 for Chinese airlines and seek to export the aircraft to China’s trading partners in Africa. The belt and road now has an airborne element that can be added to its economic cooperation package.

China has taken a long-term perspective on aviation, and while the ramp-up of the C919 will likely be slow in the near term, by western standards, orders and deliveries will continue to grow. The program has already generated enough orders to be commercially successful from the domestic Chinese market alone. While we will need to wait to observe the in-service reliability of the aircraft and COMAC’s support infrastructure in action, the COMAC C919 does provide China with a homegrown and economically competitive option that is an upgrade to the A320ceo and 737NG families.  The operating economics of the C919 fall just short of the A320neo and 737 MAX families but are very close and quite competitive.

The challenge is the follow-up, continuous improvement, and moving to the second large aircraft, the wide-body CR929. That project will build on the experience in developing and certifying the C919 as China grows its industry with a long-term horizon of being a major player in international aerospace.

Many in the western aerospace industry have counted the Chinese out in the near term, as the C919 won’t be as efficient or as good as the western alternatives, which benefit from long experience. From our viewpoint, the C919 is competitive enough to be attractive to Chinese airlines from both a capital cost and operating cost perspective, with better economics than the existing A320ceo and 737NG series aircraft it will be replacing.  Becoming the world’s third major producer of commercial aircraft is a significant accomplishment and reflects well on China’s long-term plan for commercial aviation.  The question is not if but when China reaches its goal of having a true competitor for Airbus and Boeing.

The COMAC C919 will give China some independence in commercial aviation. China is actively working on domestic designs for avionics, engines, and other western supplied components to become less dependent on western suppliers. Over the next decade, the C919 will morph from a Chinese aircraft using western suppliers to a Chinese aircraft using Chinese suppliers that can match western technologies, likely even Chinese-produced engines.  That subtle difference will significantly impact the supply chain and the future likelihood of western companies supplying COMAC.

We congratulate COMAC on its initial success and a key step in its strategy to become a major player in global aviation.  Ten years from now, we may look at COMAC differently than we do today.