Last month, China’s homegrown large passenger aircraft, the C919, crossed a critical milestone by completing its first international flight—a scheduled journey to Hong Kong.
The C919 jet, produced by the Chinese state-owned aircraft manufacturer Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), is now aiming to open new routes to Southeast Asia for the planes by 2026, according to Reuters, in what would be a first step for the planemaker to expand beyond the domestic market.
COMAC is also seeking European certification for the C919 as early as this year. This would enable airlines to fly the jet in more countries globally.
The C919 is currently in service with major Chinese carriers like Air China and China Southern Airlines.
China’s ambition to challenge the Boeing-Airbus duopoly is a decade and a half in the making.
However, with a string of fatal accidents, airborne mishaps and workers’ strikes denting Boeing’s reputation and production, as well as supply constraints impacting the larger aircraft manufacturing industry, the question of whether China can do so successfully, has received a fresh lease of life.
Invezz takes a look at the various aspects shaping the debate:
COMAC’s product catalogue
Currently, the COMAC produces three types of aircrafts.
The C909 is a regional jet and the company’s first marketed aircraft which is suitable for relying on regional airports or sub-hub airports to build route networks and supplement transport capacity for hub airports.
The C919 is COMAC’s narrow-body aircraft with a capacity of up to 190 passengers, and a range of nearly 5,500 kms.
It is this aircraft which is directly pitched against Boeing and Airbus’ narrow-body aircrafts like the Airbus 320 and the Boeing 737 Max.
The C929 is a wide-body jet which rivals Airbus’ A350 and Boeing’s 787.
The aircraft is in the preliminary design and supplier selection phase, with plans to move to the detailed design stage soon.
Airlines could take deliveries of the C929 as early as 2027.
However, with narrow-body or single-aisle aircrafts being the most widely used airliners across the world, it is the COMAC C919 whose flight path will determine how far the COMAC can go.
The case for COMAC being a veritable challenger
COMAC’s aspirations come amid a turbulent time for its competitors.
Boeing, still recovering from production setbacks and reputational damage following a string of high-profile accidents, delivered only 348 aircraft in 2024—a third of its 2023 output.
Its annual deliveries in 2024 was also its lowest since Covid-19 pandemic.
“It will be years before Boeing returns to its normal production rates,” Scott Hamilton, managing director of Leeham Company, and aviation veteran, told Invezz.
While Airbus fared better, delivering 766 planes last year, the most since 2019, it is not immune to supply chain constraints and currently sits on a 8,648-aircraft backlog.
“From a demand perspective, the opportunity (for COMAC) certainly exists,” says Rob Morris, Global head of consultancy, Cirium Ascend Consultancy.
Cirium’s Fleet Forecast predicts a need for more than 40,000 single-aisle and twin-aisle passenger jets over the next 20 years.
Unless Airbus and Boeing double their production capacity, there’s room for a third player, it says.
Challenges to COMAC’s rise
Despite its ambitions, COMAC faces significant production hurdles.
The C919 has amassed over 1,000 orders from Chinese airlines and lessors, including Air China and China Eastern, but the manufacturer is facing an extensive backlog.
As of December 2024, COMAC had delivered just 14 aircraft to the three Chinese airlines.
It now hopes to deliver twice the number of its C919 passenger jets this year as it scales up production to meet demand.
“Comac anticipates it will dispatch 30 units of the C919 this year with a production capacity scale of up to 50 units,” the company’s vice-president Shen Bo said on Friday, according to news portal ThePaper.cn.
Source: Cirium Aviation Analytics
Despite the update, capacity remains a major concern for the manufacturer and it was forced to scale back its production plans as it struggled to meet demand.
Hamilton notes that while Boeing’s and Airbus’s challenges, along with the global aircraft backlog, create opportunities for COMAC which are more pronounced in relation to Boeing than Airbus, all three manufacturers face similar supply chain constraints.
COMAC’s reliance on Western technology and components further complicates its production capabilities, particularly amid ongoing geopolitical tensions.
The road to global certification
For COMAC to establish itself internationally, certification by global aviation authorities is critical.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has been evaluating the C919 since 2019, with flight tests expected to begin as early as 2025.
In August 2024, the EASA completed its fourth round of on-site assessments, a critical step in evaluating the aircraft’s regulatory compliance.
However, in an interview with Reuters last year, Luc Tytgat, acting executive director of EASA said the plane is “too new for us to know how easy or difficult it will be” to certify quickly.
China is stepping up regulatory pressure to win foreign backing for its new jet, but industry sources have warned the landmark approvals from Western regulators could take years.
Gaining certification from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) presents a tougher challenge.
“The FAA would be more problematic due to the negative fallout from the Max crises,” Hamilton says.
The inclusion of COMAC on a US Defense Department list of Chinese military companies earlier this month has further complicated its prospects.
COMAC’s flagship aircraft, such as the C919, heavily depend on US and Western technology. The designation may impede COMAC’s ability to certify and deliver aircraft to international markets.
Further, since global aviation supply chains are interdependent, the move might also compel non-US suppliers to reconsider dealings with COMAC to avoid secondary sanctions.
Hamilton concedes that due to the ongoing trade war between western countries, particularly the US and Europe, and China, as well as China’s alignment with Russia, its international ambitions will get impacted.
Domestic market to largely drive COMAC’s sales
COMAC’s strongest advantage lies in its massive domestic market, which could account for 15% of global single-aisle aircraft deliveries by 2043.
With more than 6,000 new single-aisle deliveries expected in China over the forecast period (of up till 2043), C919 is expected to capture around 25% market share compared to Boeing’s 30% and Airbus’s 45%, Cirium said.
However, analysts predict fewer than 250 C919s will be sold outside China, primarily to nations with strong Belt and Road Initiative ties.
“Within China, the government must approve all orders, so Beijing will dictate who gets what. Outside China, it will be a matter of where China had the most influence politically or via investments,” Hamilton says, adding that Indonesian airline TransNusa is also partly owned by the Chinese lessor CALC so it is getting C909 and C919.
Verdict: Will COMAC join the elite club?
While COMAC has the potential to join Airbus and Boeing in the commercial aircraft market, its journey will likely be slower than Airbus’s entry in the 1980s, says Morris.
Cirium’s backlog indicates an expectation that COMAC will deliver more than 130 aircraft to customers in 2031.
Delivery of around 1,800 single-aisle aircraft is expected globally in 2029, so 150 aircraft from COMAC would represent less than 10% of the total market, he says.
He adds that Boeing, despite its current struggles, is expected to restore production of its 737 family to four times COMAC’s 2029 target.
Similarly, Airbus is projected to produce its A320 family at nearly six times COMAC’s scale in the same timeframe.
“The barriers to entry in the large commercial aircraft market have always been huge – potentially insurmountable for many as witnessed by Bombardier’s ultimately doomed efforts with its CSeries,” Morris said.
…COMAC can leverage the domestic market to generate sales. But for now the relative pace of those sales seems set to be much slower than even Airbus achieved as it entered the market in the 1980s. Hence, it seems likely that it will be a very long time before AB today genuinely becomes ABC.
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