China's Dream Mission

China’s state-owned COMAC is on its way to produce a third best to A320 and Boeing 737. The take-off of the first C919 will be a wake up call for the Indian aerospace industry.

Most projections envision that amongst all regions in the world, the Asia-Pacific is where civil aviation is poised to grow at the highest pace over the next decade or two. During the last decade, the Asia-Pacific region has seen the rise of as many as 44 low-cost carriers. A Flightglobal Fleet Forecast predicts that by 2032, there would be a demand for 5,000 Airbus A320 and 4,300 Boeing 737 airliners in the Asia-Pacific region and China. When coalesced, these titbits conjure up ideal marketplace conditions for 150- to 180-seat narrow-body airliners, should some aircraft manufacturer be looking for an opportunity to exploit. The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) is doing just that. State-owned, Shanghai-based COMAC, was formed in 2008 and functions as the principal aircraft manufacturer implementing large civil passenger aircraft programmes. It is engaged in the development and production of civil aircraft and related businesses such as marketing, servicing, leasing and operations. The COMAC website claims that it adheres to the principle of “development with Chinese characteristics”, a typically oblique reference to China’s claims of self-reliant technological progress.

Scepticism about the ‘indigenous’ content of China’s civil commercial aircraft development programme notwithstanding, the fact remains that COMAC appears set to produce, albeit with some difficulty, a civil airliner in the A320/Boeing737 class. In a lighter vein, it is being said that the ‘A’ of Airbus and the ‘B’ of Boeing are to be followed by the ‘C’ of COMAC in the narrow-body regime with the introduction of the COMAC919 (C919).

The C919 Programme

Designed to break the A320/Boeing 737 duopoly in the single-aisle segment, the C919 is expected to have two cabin options, a 168-seat all-economy version and a 156- seat business and economy class version. Some reports allude to a 180-seat, all-economy, high density version, but COMAC has never made such a projection. Chinese sources refer to the C919 as a “trunk liner” and COMAC itself terms it as “a short-medium-range commercial trunk liner.” The basic version is designed to have a range of 4,075 km, while a later, extended range version is claimed to have a range of 5,555 km. According to COMAC, the life of the C919 is designed to be 90,000 flying hours or 30 years. COMAC claims that fuel consumption and direct operating cost per-seat-per-km would be lower than those of “similar existing airplanes” (read A320 and Boeing 737). There are plans to produce a basic version, an extended version, a shortened version, a cargo version, a corporate version and a special version possibly for military/police roles.

Delays

Although the programme is being executed aggressively, to some industry watchers, the deadlines are over-optimistic given the bureaucratic, top-heavy decision-making structure that Chinese organisations have a predilection for. The programme was launched in 2008 and the initial expectation was for the aircraft to enter service by 2016. In March last year, Xinhua announced that the maiden flight of the C919 was expected in 2014 and quoted Wu Guanghui, the Chief Designer and Vice General Manager of COMAC, as saying that the airframe design was complete and ground tests were planned to commence in 2013.

On account of delays during 2012, COMAC asked project designers to work 12 hours a day and six days a week to meet the deadline for the maiden flight. Despite the efforts, the project has been delayed and it now appears that the earliest it will go into service would be in 2018. The 10-year period from 2008 to service entry in 2018, appears to be long but not inordinately so when compared with the eight years it took for the Boeing 787 programme to mature. It is also noteworthy that while Boeing had the experience of at least seven major programmes earlier, for COMAC the C919 is just its second programme after the 90-seat ARJ-21 regional jet programme which is to enter service in mid-2014.

Industry wisdom would have counselled that a start-up like COMAC first produce a smaller turboprop (50 to 70 seats), follow it up with an ARJ-21 type of design and then undertake a 150- to 180-seat narrow-body aircraft. However, COMAC embarked on the C919 project much before the smaller ARJ-21 entered service. The C919 programme has been delayed twice already and another delay cannot be ruled out. The current prediction for maiden flight is end-2015 and service entry in 2018.

Power Plant

The power plant selected for the aircraft is the CFM Leap-1C which, like the Leap-X proposed for the A320neo, is attributed with 15 per cent fuel saving over CFM engines of comparable thrust. The Leap-1C is due to be certified in June 2015 and enter service in 2016. However, it is possible that Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) may permit C919 flight testing with Leap-1C even before the engine is certified. CFM is expected to deliver a complete Leap-1C integrated propulsion system for the C919 programme in partnership with Nexcelle, a 50-50 joint venture between Middle River Aircraft System, a US-based thrust reverser expert company, and Aircelle, a Safran Group nacelle producer. CFM will provide the engine while Nexcelle will be in charge of the nacelle and the thrust reverser. There was speculation about a Leap-1C assembly line being set up in China. While CFM International is in dialogue with the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, the former has some reservations about intellectual property rights.

Airframe

One of the ambitious targets of the C919 programme is to provide a 10 per cent reduction in operating costs in comparison to A320 and Boeing 737. Obviously, that target relates to these two types as they existed when this target was set in 2008. Since then, Airbus and Boeing have both improved their products by way of the A320neo and Boeing 737 MAX narrow-body aircraft. The improvement claimed is 10-15 per cent reduction in fuel consumption through better airframe design and more efficient engines. As the C919 is the first COMAC design of this size, the general feeling is that a ten per cent improvement over the A320/Boeing 737 is an over-ambitious target and that even a match would be a notable achievement. One of the reasons for this assessment is the significant midstream change of material for the wing section.

In January this year, COMAC had announced that the centrewing box section would be constructed of composite carbon material, but in April, a change was made to conventional aluminium which is the material being used for the rest of the wing. The reasons apparently are related to certification by the CAAC and the fact that composite materials would be far more expensive. Also, use of composites would have delayed the programme further due to the additional tests involved for certification. The tail and the movable structures, however, are expected to be made largely of composite materials.

Bombardier Inc. was reported last year as declaring that it had plans to help COMAC get overseas approval for the C919 as it had two decades of experience in obtaining approvals for regional and business aircraft globally. In March 2012, the two companies jointly stated that the C919 and Bombardier CSeries aircraft would share a common cockpit design. They are also committed to cooperation in other related areas.

Market Prospects

According to COMAC, it had 380 commitments from 15 clients for the C919 at the end of China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai in 2012, with most clients being airlines and lessors in China. GE’s aircraft leasing arm, GE Capital Aviation Service, has signed on for 20 (10 in 2010 and 10 in 2012) while other prospective customers include Air China Limited, China Southern Airlines Company, Hebei Aviation Group, Joy Air, China Eastern Airlines Corporation and leasing units of state-controlled lenders such as Bank of China Limited, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Limited and Bank of Communications.

Entry into service during 2018 looks possible but tenuous. Considerable delays on COMAC’s other product, the ARJ-21, are the cause for such caution in predicting the launch date for the C919. Even if it does see service in 2018, it will lag behind its target competitors as the expected date of entry of the A320neo is 2015 and that of the Boeing 737 MAX is 2017. Many aviation watchers are sceptical about the C919’s eventual operational capabilities, the extreme view being that it will never get off the ground. The substantiation of assertions made about the final product is an interrogation mark in terms of the fuel efficiency claimed and the performance projected.

Subsequent years will have their own story to relate about lifecycle costs in comparison to Western narrow-body aircraft. It may be pertinent to mention here that the turboprop MA-60, built by Chinese Government-owned Xi’an Aircraft Industrial Corporation, has had an abysmal record. The New Zealand Government in fact issued an advisory to its citizens that if they flew in the Real Tonga Airlines MA-60 while in Tonga, they did so at their own risk as it was not certified by acceptable regulators such as the European Aviation Safety Agency, the US Federal Aviation Administration or even the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in Australia. The MA-60 was a free gift to Real Tonga from the Chinese Government.

A Wake up Call

The foregoing has a lesson for the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), the doyen of the Indian civil aviation manufacturing sector. In the regime of passenger aircraft, HAL is yet to demonstrate a successful product. The 14-seat Saras designed by the National Aeronautical Laboratory was to be produced by HAL at Kanpur. However, the programme suffered a serious setback when the second prototype crashed in 2009. The third prototype PT-N is expected to take off by end 2013. There are some plans of building a 90-seat passenger aircraft, supposedly a regional jet. In contrast, COMAC began in 2008 and is well on its way to produce, if not a challenge, then at least a third best, to the A320 and the Boeing 737. Maybe the take-off of the first C919 will be a wake up call for the Indian aerospace industry in the civil sector.