Chinese COMAC seems to be on the verge of selling meaningful numbers to chinese airlines. Wont be surprised if they are a very viable competitor in ~20 years which isn’t much in the aviation world where backlogs span a decade
> Chinese COMAC seems to be on the verge of selling meaningful numbers to chinese airlines.
That's easy when the PRC is mandating it, but given the hard earned safety record of say... Airbus, people are not in a rush to stake their lives and businesses on Chinese built aircraft. They're not exactly known for the transparency and integrity. In 20 years COMAC is likely to suffer multiple deadly crashes.
Does it matter though that the numbers are because of PRC tipping the scales? It worked for chinese internet and auto companies. Also, chinese manufacturing is obviously capable of high standards of manufacturing if they decide to. People forget how tenuous airbus once looked or how fast they scaled up
I'm sketical, there are single digit numbers in service and I would be surprised if 差不多 culture doesn't result in a service record worse than the MAX once we have appreciable flight hours to look at. A lot can happen in 20 years but I can't see myself ever flying an MC-21 or C-919, though I won't fly on a MAX either.
Yeah. I could see a possible future Boeing split where BCA gets bought by COMAC or otherwise there's a some sort of new commercial aircraft org made from a hybrid of the two. Not a likely future, but a possible one.
