Chinese airliner

[DeepFriar]

Originally Posted By: svhanc
China will dictate domestic airlines use domestic planes. That will hurt Airbus & Boeing from a market standpoint.
It will give them a chance to work out the bugs and employ a lot of people.
They don't play by the same rules.

They will eventually make a decent plane and eventually sell worldwide.
The only question at that point will be whether their offering is competitive.


I agree. Once EASA and the FAA certify the aircraft Boeing and Airbus will not only lose a large part of Chinese domestic market but likely also many in the developing world as well. The Chinese are known for lowball pricing projects and providing cheap labor in furtherance of their foreign policy objectives. Their vision of a "New Silk Road" or so-called golden belt will be built on such pricing strategies in my opinion.

 

[fdcg27]

Originally Posted By: Jetronic
but the first owner might not keep it 30 years... and so far they think it'll cost half of a 737 to buy


No 737 or A320 sells for anything close to 2X $50M. For a hundred million dollars, you'd get an A330 at least.
If the Chinese need to sell their plane for that kind of coin to make the numbers come out, then the only market they'll have is Chinese domestic.
I doubt that any airline has actually paid even fifty million dollars for an A320 or 737.
A & B have huge production capacity in single aisles and will be able to underprice the Chinese for many years to come.
Meanwhile, they're developing new and far more efficient aircraft that will leave the Chinese wondering where their target market went.
China may be developing, but Airbus and Boeing have been playing the game technically for decades.
Anyone else recall how Japan was set to take over the world in the eighties?
Same with China today.
Plastic junk and commodity electronics like Apple phones and various PCs?
Sure.
World class products aimed at a sophisticated market?
Can't see it.

 

[L_Sludger]

The most significant part of an airplane is the engine. The engines on the C919 are made by GE, so they are reliant upon the US for this fleet to fly, and for export and re-export ability if they wanted to do such a thing.

 

[fdcg27]

Originally Posted By: L_Sludger
The most significant part of an airplane is the engine. The engines on the C919 are made by GE, so they are reliant upon the US for this fleet to fly, and for export and re-export ability if they wanted to do such a thing.


The engines are from the CFM joint venture, not the same entity as GE.
As for the engines being the most significant part of an airplane, yes and no.
When comparing engines of similar technical generations, the aircraft itself is of more significance than the engines.
Boeing and Airbus have been tweaking their aircraft in this class for decades, with Boeing even fitting the 737 with a new wing and empennage some years back.
You might argue that as a new design the Comac has more potential for development and improvement that do the 737 and the A320.
OTOH, we have yet to see any evidence of the sophistication of the Comac design. It could well be a seriously compromised technical dead end.
The C919 also seems a little on the small side as the primary offerings from A & B have grown larger. I suspect that much of this potential for a smaller mainline aircraft market outside of China will be gobbled up by the very efficient C series.
We'll see, but I don't think it's yet time to proclaim the end of the Western commercial aircraft industries.

 

[Yah-Tah-Hey]

BOEING on the fuselage and GE on the gas turbines.

 

[fdcg27]

As I noted above, the engines aren't GE. They're the product of what was originally a joint venture between GE and SNECMA and were the completion of the engine originally intended to power the Mercure. The Mercure had instead to make do with Pratts and was built in ridiculously small numbers, smaller than Concorde.
The fuselage is really not that important. It's the wing that matters. Nobody knows more than Boeing and Airbus about what matters in designing an efficient wing for a transport intended to be operated from airports and while the two have somewhat different design philosophies, neither is giving their ideas away. It might also be that you could give the Chinese designers complete disclosure but they lack the manufacturing capability to build a wing that Boeing or Airbus install on new single aisle aircraft every day.
Cheap consumer electronics like Apple phones are one thing. Mechanically complex assemblies like the wing of an airliner are a whole different deal.

 

[Mr Nice]

Why not use Rolls Royce jet engines ?

I thought Rolls Royce were preferred more than GE, CFM, P&W...

 

[L_Sludger]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
Originally Posted By: L_Sludger
The most significant part of an airplane is the engine. The engines on the C919 are made by GE, so they are reliant upon the US for this fleet to fly, and for export and re-export ability if they wanted to do such a thing.


The engines are from the CFM joint venture, not the same entity as GE.
As for the engines being the most significant part of an airplane, yes and no.


Well I distinctly remember working for GE on the CFMi LEAP-1C fitted to the Comac C919. Snecma has a bit role in the design but it's GE that does the heavy lifting here.

And it IS the engine that makes an aircraft go. If you put a big enough engine on a brick, it will fly. The F-4 Phantom was just one of those bricks... but it took TWO of those engines to make it go!

I don't buy the wing argument for a minute. The engine is by far the most significant aspect in the development of any new airplane. Wing designs are easily copied and modeled. You can make one in your garage. You can't make a jet engine turbine blade out of fiberglass or carbon fiber though.

 

[fdcg27]

Read up a little on aircraft design.
The engines matter, but only if you're comparing the old low bypass Pratts used on the 737-200 with the CFMs used on the 737-300.
If the wing didn't matter, then Boeing wouldn't have bothered with the NG, which was built to match the performance of the A320 that used the same CFM engines.
Making an aircraft go is one thing. As one designer was once recorded as having said, give me enough power and I'll make a barn door fly.
Making an aircraft economically viable is something else again, as was proven with the Convair 880, with very thirsty GEs versus the Boeing 720, with far more efficient Pratts. That the 720 was actually faster than the 880 was a tribute to Boeing's more efficient wing.
The engines provide power but when comparing any two engines of the same generation, the design of the wing determines economic viability.
As for building the wing of any airliner of the past sixty years or so in your garage, good luck with that.
It would be just as accurate to claim that any decent machine/fab shop could build any gas turbine.

 

[BalticBob]

Originally Posted By: wemay
Which industry doesn't take bits and pieces from competitors?


Honest ones