Chinese Aviation Industry

No, it is more like any European naming "Cesar airline".

Ghengis Khan to east Asians is like Alexander the Great (a Macedonian) and/or Julius Cesar (a Roman) to Europeans. Both of the two European conquerors are well respected by Europeans regardless regions. For example, Julius Cesar conquered German land by killing lots of locals did not prevent later Germanic monarchs to take the title Kaiser (German spelling of Cesar) from Cesar's personal name, neither did the Germanic rulers shy away from claiming to be the legitimate heir to the Roman empire, (the Holly Roman Empire of the Germans). Alexander the Great conquered all independent Greek city states and Kingdom of Spartan, while all Greeks today highly respect Alexander.

Ghengis Khan is ONLY (more) negatively regarded by people to the west of China and Mongolia for religious and racial reasons, especially Muslims for the apparent reasons (Mongol sack of Baghdad which is a disaster of civilization).

The airline in question is funded by the government of Inner Mongolia. So using Ghengis Khan makes good commercial sense in serving routes from and to Inner Mongolia and between China and Mongolian Republic. It won't serve any route to Central and Western Asia.

Another thing that complicated the naming is that the Chinese name of the airline is NOT Ghengis Khan but "Tian Jiao" which literally means "The one/best son of the heaven". It was just a general term to refer to someone of greatness until Mao Zedong in one of his poem to express his personal ambition of exceeding any proceeding rulers of China where he addressed Ghengis Khan as "Tian Jiao" while stating that Ghengis Khan is ONLY able to conquer by brutal force without knowledge of presiding peace. It was since then, "Tian Jiao" is almost exclusively linked to Ghengis Khan. Therefor the choice of Chinese English translation of Tian Jiao to Ghengis Khan.

 

Comac booth at the 6th Mianyang Technology Expo in Mianyang, Sichuan province...

Might the third photo indicate some kind of lifting body design?

(2048 x 1536)



(2048 x 1536)


(2000 x 1125)


I think this might be a wind tunnel model of C919 (1620 x 1080):

 

Is there any more info on this? Looks really promising

 

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any photo with an information placard, but a remote-controlled model of this or something similar was tested a while back. You can find it on this thread.

 

What do canted vertical tails do for a passenger airliner? I like the design and hope they make it but aren't they more for reducing RCS? Maybe they're aiming for a military role also?

 

If they can serve the same function as the traditional tri-stabilizers, then they can reduce the manufacturing process from making and attaching 3 rear stabilizers to 2. Financial angle gain.

 

And less drag wich implies less consumption..

 

From the look of the aft fuselage, it is difficult to put the conventional horizontal stabilizer without breaking the lifting body. The main wing start right at the front door and end behind the back door, essentially the wing is as long as the body.

Because the main wing is so long, a conventional horizontal stabilizer will be in the airflow of the main wing, meaning less effective.

 

Hmm looks like it had over 35 rows, possible 2035+ follow to the C919?

 

Interesting that the first picture shows a Concorde.

I'm guessing the canted tails provide positive lift instead of the usual negative lift. Then the lifting body design needs to ensure unintended gain in angle of attack (gust of wind etc) results in rear body area gaining more lift than front to rotate the plane back downwards. The front lifting body area seems to stall before the back at higher AOA.

If main wing lift (and drag) is lower than existing designs the increase in fuel efficiency would possibly be a game changer vs. existing airliners in fuel cost terms. But regardless visually it looks sleek enough that airlines may even buy it based on looks alone!

Wonder how fast can we see it fly if the design is sound and testing is smooth.