China’s rival to Boeing, Airbus cleared for mass production

The narrow-body aircraft China hopes will eventually break the duopoly enjoyed by the Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) and Airbus has been given the green light to begin mass production.

According to a report from Reuters, China’s aviation regulator has awarded production certification to the new C919, the country’s homegrown passenger jet built by Commercial Aviation Corp. of China (COMAC), The Puget Sound Business Journal reported on November 29.

That follows type certification for the new airliner in late September, with China Eastern Airlines expected to receive the first C919 before the end of the year.

The jet represents the fruition of China’s oft-delayed ambitions — the program was originally unveiled in 2009 — to get into the lucrative narrow-body market dominated by Boeing and Airbus.

That includes the narrow-body Boeing 737 Max, which is Boeing’s largest commercial program. Final assembly takes place at the company's factory in Renton. Boeing and Airbus both have Puget Sound-area suppliers.

But just how much of a rival the C919 will be to the 737 and A320 has long been questioned by analysts, more recently noting the impact of trade tensions on the sourcing of Western components on the China-assembled jet among other issues.

“Once, the C919 symbolized China’s rise as an aviation power,” aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, wrote shortly after type certification. “I didn’t appreciate it at the time but implicit with that goal was a level of integration into the world economy, and the broader community of peaceful nations.

Instead, the same C919 has become a way to measure and track a dystopian future — either the West kills this jet … or it gets built in tiny numbers … or China needs to replace it with a real Chinese alternative.”

COMAC has previously said that it has more than 800 orders for the C919 and has forecasted sales of more than 2,000 of the jets over the next 20 years.  

But analysts at Jefferies last month tabbed production expectations on the C919 at just 25 aircraft per year by 2030.

For comparison, Boeing plans to return to monthly output of around 50 737s per month around the middle of the decade — at which point Airbus plans monthly output as high as 75 aircraft on the A320.