Comac C919

China's main purpose is to buy Boeing, particularly by the sort of service package whereby Boeing will supply a lot of parts for the planes that China bought.

But China will use those parts not for its Boeing fleet in China, but for its own C-919 aircraft.

you know, their own sort of, their so-called indigenous aircraft.

That was the model built by China to replace Boeing altogether.

Among the exhibits are robotic arms that assemble airline meals and a four-legged robot being tested for airport delivery tests.

Many models of domestically produced aircraft are also on display, including two C919 variants.

One's a stretched single-aisle model seating up to 240 passengers, nearly 80 more than models already in service.

The other's a shortened version with a 140-seat layout that's designed for plateau regions.

To date, the C919 has safely operated over 150,000 hours, carried more than 8 million passengers, and connected 26 cities.

The C909 has flown over 1.1 million hours, carried more than 40 million passengers, and become the mainstay of China's regional aviation market, linking 13 neighboring countries.

The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China says the C-929 is in its detailed design phase, and the company is also developing hybrid electric and hydrogen-powered aircraft.

Shibring airline officials, one would assume they're from COMAC, Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China.

And of course, they have the C919, which is their kind of answer to the A320 or the 737.

It's flying widely throughout China.

It had just had its first international flight to Mongolia.

Well, that was about designing and building an airplane.

Don't worry about the C919, that's about certificating and putting it into, into service, but locally.

Don't worry about the wide body, worry about the next one.

Mm-hmm.

Winning hearts and minds even, right?

Right.

In China right now, it is a nationalist thing to get on a C919.

If you're a passenger, you get on a C919, that's what you do still in that society.

That's taking a huge amount of time.

Of course, they're doing this very, very carefully because they have to try and basically sell the C919 with the same sort of level of safety and efficiency as they can as with the a320 neo or the max 737 max but the heart of the issue as kevin says is getting this sort of black magic right with the heart of the engine which is uh the hot section the high pressure turbine and without that capability, then that's the long pole in every development tent, frankly.

Kevin, this week, obviously, everyone's talking is the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, 25th anniversary.

Got me to thinking, if you go back 25 years, the darling of Wall Street was Jack Welch, the chairman of General Electric, which was then a conglomerate.

Back to another topic which I follow with a lot of interest.

I don't know why Anne and Ash is not so interested in this, but the COMAC, the Chinese manufacturer, one of their first planes, the C919 model, made international history.

They flew for the first time outside of China and they actually operated a route to Mongolia.

With 120-odd passengers on board, a very successful flight there and back, no problems.

It's just not bringing in enough revenue.

The Reuters article we'll, we'll link to says that China Eastern says it expects to receive 13 fewer C919 deliveries than previously forecast between 2026 and 2028, so not even COMAC is immune to delivering far fewer aircraft than expected.

Very hard to piece together exactly what's happening with these airlines and w- these airframers in China, but the bits and pieces we do see are, are not particularly good.

No.

Despite these difficulties, Air China, China Eastern and China Southern continue to modernize their fleets.

All three airlines are still introducing the Comac C919, although China Eastern has reduced some of its expected deliveries for the coming years.

More efficient aircraft can reduce fuel consumption and maintenance expenses over the long term.

However, every new aircraft also creates financial commitments, payments, crew training requirements and investments in infrastructure.