Chinese Aviation Industry

Rettam Stacf

Junior Member
Registered Member
Shifting Boeing orders to Airbus on the condition that EU come up with an engine for C919 is a double win for EU. They will kill for that business.

Just talking to EU about that possibility will be a good move by China to keep Trump and GE honest.
 

SamuraiBlue

Captain
How about this then? Boeing's commercial aviation division is in a crisis right now:
1. The 737 Max fiasco has resulted in airlines all over the world grounding their 737 fleets. This is seriously bad for Boeing's business and they have lost and will continue to lose even more single aisle orders to Airbus's 320 Neo. Some versions of the A320 were already outselling Boeing's by a factor of 2 and now it will only get worse.
2. The current financial crisis will lead to mass cancellation of airplane orders for years to come. Many airlines will be going bankrupt, and those that won't will be downsizing. Expect mass cancellations of already booked orders and new orders coming to a halt.

Boeing is going to lose tens of billions of dollars in sales, and there will be mass layoffs. If Boeing (and Airbus) doesn't sell planes, then GE doesn't sell engines.

Do you expect trump to block GE from selling engines to China in this situation?

Even if the US didn't have all this to worry about, barring GE from selling engines to China would lead to immediate Chinese reprisal. China is Boeing's largest market, thousands of planes are on order, and China would immediately cancel all their orders with Boeing and shift them to Airbus. Airbus would have been more than happy to sell thousands of A320s.
It's not that simple to tell you the truth.
All commercial airline pilots require type license to fly commercially which requires certain amount of hours on the simulator to gain a license.
Smaller airline companies don't have the budget to acquire the simulators or have the pilots train so they tend to purchase the same type.
 

FactsPlease

Junior Member
Registered Member
How about this then? Boeing's commercial aviation division is in a crisis right now:
1. The 737 Max fiasco has resulted in airlines all over the world grounding their 737 fleets. This is seriously bad for Boeing's business and they have lost and will continue to lose even more single aisle orders to Airbus's 320 Neo. Some versions of the A320 were already outselling Boeing's by a factor of 2 and now it will only get worse.
2. The current financial crisis will lead to mass cancellation of airplane orders for years to come. Many airlines will be going bankrupt, and those that won't will be downsizing. Expect mass cancellations of already booked orders and new orders coming to a halt.

Boeing is going to lose tens of billions of dollars in sales, and there will be mass layoffs. If Boeing (and Airbus) doesn't sell planes, then GE doesn't sell engines.

Do you expect trump to block GE from selling engines to China in this situation?

Even if the US didn't have all this to worry about, barring GE from selling engines to China would lead to immediate Chinese reprisal. China is Boeing's largest market, thousands of planes are on order, and China would immediately cancel all their orders with Boeing and shift them to Airbus. Airbus would have been more than happy to sell thousands of A320s.
Thanks for the reply.
As I said: I'm here to be educated. So, I'm NOT going to take this as argue, nor defense (of anything). Nevertheless, I have to point out what's a "valid argument". Saying that, this will be my last post reg GE engine - repeat: am NOT going to defend nor argue my point (what's my point? to be educated, with meaningful information)

Your first point about 737 Max fiasco - a valid argument to counter I said "GE Engine (division) seems be doing ok" will be percentage of 737 business versus (what I mentioned) 787 business in GE order book. I at least provide numbers about 787 order book. You didn't do the same on 737 business impact (how many orders can/may be cancelled). So, that's NOT a valid argument, or at least simply saying "seriously bad" is NOT good enough.

Your second point about "current financial crisis", had been in my 2nd post. Again, you did NOT provide any key numbers how that will impact GE Engine division business -- NOR did I, I admit. But here the point is you want to justify a claim. Just saying "many airlines will be going bankrupt" does NOT quantify the impact on GE. And thus NO value in validity, at all.

The most invalid point is your last paragraph: "Even if the US didn't have all this to worry about, barring GE from selling engines to China would lead to immediate Chinese reprisal." You seems to forget: the news clearly indicated that GE Engine is, before Trump latest decision, NOT selling to China. So, there is NO so-called "China reprisal", as China had NOT done any reprisal in the first place (and of course it won't do now). So, that statement is totally disoriented.

Again, you mention that "China is Boeing's largest market". Then, please provide me some numbers to prove it - and please also compare impact on GE versus GE share already earned in global market. Only that way, you make a valid point. I don't want to go to last that "China is shifting business from Boeing to A320" as the article I posted already indicated A320 also use GE engine (why dragging Boeing in instead focusing on the impact on GE?).

Rarely done such a long post. Simply want to clarify what's a "valid" argument and education. As long as it's a valid one, I'll more than appreciate to accept.

Mod: delete this one is it's derailing the thread. Thanks.
 
Last edited:

schrage musik

Junior Member
Registered Member
Thanks for the reply.
As I said: I'm here to be educated. So, I'm NOT going to take this as argue, nor defense (of anything). Nevertheless, I have to point out what's a "valid argument". Saying that, this will be my last post reg GE engine - repeat: am NOT going to defend nor argue my point (what's my point? to be educated, with meaningful information)

Your first point about 737 Max fiasco - a valid argument to counter I said "GE Engine (division) seems be doing ok" will be percentage of 737 business versus (what I mentioned) 787 business in GE order book. I at least provide numbers about 787 order book. You didn't do the same on 737 business impact (how many orders can/may be cancelled). So, that's NOT a valid argument, or at least simply saying "seriously bad" is NOT good enough.

Your second point about "current financial crisis", had been in my 2nd post. Again, you did NOT provide any key numbers how that will impact GE Engine division business -- NOR did I, I admit. But here the point is you want to justify a claim. Just saying "many airlines will be going bankrupt" does NOT quantify the impact on GE. And thus NO value in validity, at all.

The most invalid point is your last paragraph: "Even if the US didn't have all this to worry about, barring GE from selling engines to China would lead to immediate Chinese reprisal." You seems to forget: the news clearly indicated that GE Engine is, before Trump latest decision, NOT selling to China. So, there is NO so-called "China reprisal", as China had NOT done any reprisal in the first place (and of course it won't do now). So, that statement is totally disoriented.

Again, you mention that "China is Boeing's largest market". Then, please provide me some numbers to prove it - and please also compare impact on GE versus GE share already earned in global market. Only that way, you make a valid point. I don't want to go to last that "China is shifting business from Boeing to A320" as the article I posted already indicated A320 also use GE engine (why dragging Boeing in instead focusing on the impact on GE?).

Rarely done such a long post. Simply want to clarify what's a "valid" argument and education. As long as it's a valid one, I'll more than appreciate to accept.

Mod: delete this one is it's derailing the thread. Thanks.


I didn't provide numbers because those are easy to look up, and i'm wasn't really inclined to do the googling for you. I also admit that I didnt provide any analysis of "737 business impact (how many orders can/may be cancelled)" or "compare impact on GE versus GE share already earned in global market". That happens to be the sort of thing people pay a lot of money for. But I hope you got the point of my post and you should be able to read up in the direction you were pointed in. I'll add some important numbers to help along:

1)
Untill Jan 2019, this was Boeing's situation (data taken from wikipedia):

Boeing 737: Sold 15217 / Delivered 10463
Boeing 787: Sold 1421 / Delivered 789

So even though the 787 is costs ~3 times more than the 737 (in the range of around $100m for 737 and $300m for 787), it is easy to see that the overwhelming revenue of Boeing Commercial Aviation is from the 737 and its derivatives. Boeing cannot afford a major slump in the 737's sales because of this.

Already in 2019, Boeing delivered only half as many planes as in 2018. More order cancellations have started in March 2020 and it will only get worse.

2)
Coming to China market position, China in 2017 and 2018 accounted for 22% of Boeing's deliveries. And both Boeing and Airbus in their market forecasts since 2018 have said that China will be the world's largest airplane market in the next 20 years. Both of those reports are available for free, you should read them.

Boeing's 2018 forecast for China says that China will buy a total of 8090 new planes over the next 20 years (till 2038), at a value of roughly $ 1.3 trillion. This would include 5,960 new single-aisle airplanes, representing 74% of total new deliveries, with the remaining being 1,780 wide-body aircraft. Airbus also projects that China will buy 7400 new planes in the same period. In addition to this, China will also require some $1.6 trillion worth of commercial services for its aircraft fleet. The total comes to a whopping $3 trillion worth business over the next 20 years. Take a moment to visualize that.

So again, you can see from these future projections as well, it is the 737 that is critical to Boeing's market position (just as the A320 is Airbus's major cash cow), and any impact on the 737's sales has the potential to cause lost business worth many hundreds of billions of dollars.

3)
Coming to GE, China is buying thousands of A320s and B737s which use engines from both GE (LEAP) and Pratt and Whitney. Then there is the C919 which is also going to use the GE/LEAP engine. So yeah, they're selling a lot of engines to China.

China has got the option of equipping the planes they buy with either the Pratt and Whitney PW1000 or, if even that one isn't available, they can use the Russian Aviadvigatel PD-14. The PD-14 is already certified by the Russian agency and is now targeting EASA certification. And then there is the domestic CJ-1000 option which will be ready in a few years. So depriving GE of tens of billions dollars worth of revenue will only be a massive self goal for trump.

regarding the impact of the current global crisis on airlines, you can google and read to convince yourself.
 

drowingfish

Junior Member
Registered Member
I didn't provide numbers because those are easy to look up, and i'm wasn't really inclined to do the googling for you. I also admit that I didnt provide any analysis of "737 business impact (how many orders can/may be cancelled)" or "compare impact on GE versus GE share already earned in global market". That happens to be the sort of thing people pay a lot of money for. But I hope you got the point of my post and you should be able to read up in the direction you were pointed in. I'll add some important numbers to help along:

1)
Untill Jan 2019, this was Boeing's situation (data taken from wikipedia):

Boeing 737: Sold 15217 / Delivered 10463
Boeing 787: Sold 1421 / Delivered 789

So even though the 787 is costs ~3 times more than the 737 (in the range of around $100m for 737 and $300m for 787), it is easy to see that the overwhelming revenue of Boeing Commercial Aviation is from the 737 and its derivatives. Boeing cannot afford a major slump in the 737's sales because of this.

Already in 2019, Boeing delivered only half as many planes as in 2018. More order cancellations have started in March 2020 and it will only get worse.

2)
Coming to China market position, China in 2017 and 2018 accounted for 22% of Boeing's deliveries. And both Boeing and Airbus in their market forecasts since 2018 have said that China will be the world's largest airplane market in the next 20 years. Both of those reports are available for free, you should read them.

Boeing's 2018 forecast for China says that China will buy a total of 8090 new planes over the next 20 years (till 2038), at a value of roughly $ 1.3 trillion. This would include 5,960 new single-aisle airplanes, representing 74% of total new deliveries, with the remaining being 1,780 wide-body aircraft. Airbus also projects that China will buy 7400 new planes in the same period. In addition to this, China will also require some $1.6 trillion worth of commercial services for its aircraft fleet. The total comes to a whopping $3 trillion worth business over the next 20 years. Take a moment to visualize that.

So again, you can see from these future projections as well, it is the 737 that is critical to Boeing's market position (just as the A320 is Airbus's major cash cow), and any impact on the 737's sales has the potential to cause lost business worth many hundreds of billions of dollars.

3)
Coming to GE, China is buying thousands of A320s and B737s which use engines from both GE (LEAP) and Pratt and Whitney. Then there is the C919 which is also going to use the GE/LEAP engine. So yeah, they're selling a lot of engines to China.

China has got the option of equipping the planes they buy with either the Pratt and Whitney PW1000 or, if even that one isn't available, they can use the Russian Aviadvigatel PD-14. The PD-14 is already certified by the Russian agency and is now targeting EASA certification. And then there is the domestic CJ-1000 option which will be ready in a few years. So depriving GE of tens of billions dollars worth of revenue will only be a massive self goal for trump.

regarding the impact of the current global crisis on airlines, you can google and read to convince yourself.

agree on the last point, China can simply certify C919 and use for domestic flights and maybe a few international routes where it is accepted. that is plenty of market considering COMAC's capacity.
 

Quickie

Colonel
This is an essential airplane both for the civilian and, I think, also for the military sector.
The A330 is used as a tanker aircraft in several nations. This aircraft, the CR929, will be in the same performance bracket. So I expect it to eventually also be used in that role too. Developing this airframe and these engines will take tremendous effort from both China and Russia.

Kind of rehashing the older argument here, but China is ahead of Russia in some parts of the aviation sector and behind in others. Even in civilian aviation if you compare the MC-21 with the C919 the MC-21 uses more composites and has a more advanced wing design. The MC-21 also has a native engine, PD-14, already in flight testing while the C919's engine is still in the development stage.

China also used to be way behind in helicopters compared with Russia, but I think this is not the case anymore thanks to the WZ-10 and Z-20 helicopters. With regards to fighter design, personally, I think the Su-57s airframe is more advanced than the J-20s, but the Chinese have some clever solutions like with the side weapons bays or their use of simpler to build and more RCS reducing divertirless inlets. I think the J-20 is a smart design with lower risk with less all moving surfaces and probably easier to manufacture as well. I think a lot of people underestimate the Su-57 airframe. The Chinese have put the J-20 in production however while the Russians have not put theirs so you can consider that as them being ahead. I still think it will take the Chinese 5 years to a decade to surpass any gaps they have in technology with regards to Russia. The Chinese are already much more advanced in things like avionics or radar I think.

I think the J-20 is a smart design with lower risk with less all moving surfaces and probably easier to manufacture as well.

It's the other way round.

Su-57 horizontal stabilizer has only its elevator part of it movable. The J-20 counterpart of it, the canard is all movable.

Su-57 vertical stabilizer is also partly movable. i.e. the rudder part of it.

Compare this to the J-20 vertical stabilizers which are all movable, and are highly slanted so that it can have some effect of an elevator function as well.

Overall, I would think that the yaw and pitch control of the J-20 is more complicated than the Su-57, especially because of its unconventional all moving highly slanted horizontal stabilizers.
 

Tirdent

Junior Member
Registered Member
Difficult to say for sure when it comes to avionics and electronics between Russia and China. I'd wager that when it comes to radar, Chinese radar technology is ahead in aviation and naval radars. Of course China's fundamentals were build off Russian/Soviet technologies but nowadays encompass a greater variety and depth. China has fielded various airborne and naval AESA and dual bands for close to a decade if not longer now. Over the horizon? Maybe Russia has a few more advantages there.

Chinese electronics manufacturing in general is certainly far ahead of Russia's, but this doesn't necessarily read directly across to better avionics in particular. The requirements of consumer electronics and aviation (civilian and especially military) are sufficiently different that system architecture, non-COTS bespoke circuitry and software play a prominent role. Pure transistor density is less relevant - in fact due to hardening requirements, the chips in these applications are usually several generations behind the latest consumer products. The USSR was constantly far behind the US in consumer electronics, yet managed to keep pace quite well in military avionics, so it's hard to see how China pulling ahead of Russia would be much different. In fact, the recent sanctions not withstanding, Russia has better access to COTS electronic components & know how than the USSR did, not least because of China's rise (but also via South Korea).

Where the superior Chinese electronics base will provide advantages is weight, power consumption and cooling, but again those are issues the Russians always had to contend with. The APG-63 weighed roughly half what the N001 did at comparable performance (depending largely on which variant and time period), but was the F-15 a better fighter for it? There are ways to compensate, both directly (weight) and performance (e.g. IRST + data in the case of the Su-27).

Not sure why you consider the MC-21's wings to be superior. The composites? C919 is similar. On manufacturing of frames, I think China is well ahead and approaching the US.

Not true. The C919 has a conventional wing of largely metal construction with composite secondary structure (winglets, control surfaces, high-lift devices, fixed trainling edge), much like the A320.

On the other hand the MS-21 has a complete composite wing box (including fuselage carry through) with upper & lower wing skins as well as front & rear spars manufactured out of carbon composite, like the 787 and A350. Moreover, the production process is actually more advanced than these Western examples in that for the first time in a primary structure application a pressurized autoclave is no longer required for curing. Instead, the procedure takes place at atmospheric pressure in a far cheaper oven, enabling the process to be scaled up at lower cost for the much larger C929.

Also, the MS-21 uses modern Aluminium-Lithium alloys for the fuselage (like the A220), not the traditional materials selected for the C919, and consequently offers a higher cabin altitude. The C919 does have a composite tail cone, but at best that partially compensates for the lack of a Al-Li fuselage - aircraft consist of a lot more wing & fuselage tube than tail cone by weight, so the benefits are limited.

Look at the J-20 compared to the Su-57's body. Even the J-10C has smoother surfaces, fewer gaps, and seemingly more consistency. Of course this is a relatively superficial way to judge but Russia always approached making planes like building tanks as opposed to the American way, building fine mechanical watches. J-10C, J-20, WZ-8, GJ-11 (actually any modern drone) seems to have better assembly quality.

As for surface finish, the Su-35 is pretty damn good, as is the new crop of UAVs (Orion, Altius and Okhotnik) which will become the counterparts to the Chinese Wing Loong series and GJ-11. Nevermind the Su-57s, which have a mirror like finish in primer. With those UAVs (both Russian or Chinese) in particular it's not that much of an achievement anyway, they're practically entirely composite, so the parts essentially come out of a mold. WZ-8 isn't particularly impressive in terms of finish actually, the matt black paint just hides imperfections extremely well (though of course the TPS might have something to do with it, too). Certainly, close-ups of J-31 v1.0 disclosed rather poor fit and it took years before the existence of internal weapons bays on the Su-47 became apparent - so be careful with surface details on all-black aircraft (that includes the F-117, BTW)!

It's the other way round.

Su-57 horizontal stabilizer has only its elevator part of it movable. The J-20 counterpart of it, the canard is all movable.

Su-57 vertical stabilizer is also partly movable. i.e. the rudder part of it.

Compare this to the J-20 vertical stabilizers which are all movable, and are highly slanted so that it can have some effect of an elevator function as well.

Overall, I would think that the yaw and pitch control of the J-20 is more complicated than the Su-57, especially because of its unconventional all moving highly slanted horizontal stabilizers.

???

You are either confusing the Su-35 for the Su-57 or you need to look again at a Su-57 photo - closely. It has both all-moving horizontal (as indeed have all supersonic aircraft since the 1950s, excepting pure deltas without any h-stab like the Mirage series!) and vertical tails. Moreover its vertical tail area is more dramatically reduced than the J-20's (no ventral strakes either), likely making FCS design significantly more challenging.

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Add to that TVC and LEVCONs...
 

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
As for surface finish, the Su-35 is pretty damn good, as is the new crop of UAVs (Orion, Altius and Okhotnik) which will become the counterparts to the Chinese Wing Loong series and GJ-11. Nevermind the Su-57s, which have a mirror like finish in primer. With those UAVs (both Russian or Chinese) in particular it's not that much of an achievement anyway, they're practically entirely composite, so the parts essentially come out of a mold. WZ-8 isn't particularly impressive in terms of finish actually, the matt black paint just hides imperfections extremely well (though of course the TPS might have something to do with it, too). Certainly, close-ups of J-31 v1.0 disclosed rather poor fit and it took years before the existence of internal weapons bays on the Su-47 became apparent - so be careful with surface details on all-black aircraft (that includes the F-117, BTW)!

Regarding this point in particular, I think the external fit and finish of a self developed demo like FC-31 compared to a state funded series of prototypes like the T-50 airframes is not fully fair.

A more accurate comparison would be comparing the J-20 prototypes with the T-50 airframes; and we have quite a lot of good quality pictures of J-20's details including in yellow primer where its details are all visible and obvious.
Not to mention we've had years of quite good quality pictures of production J-10B/Cs in service grey as well.


That said I agree very much with the notion that we shouldn't exatrapolate too much from mere external fit and finish in terms of what it means for an aircraft's capability etc.
But at the same time I also think comparing the leading edge of what contemporary Russian and Chinese military aviation industry is able to reach in terms of fit and finish, one would be difficult to argue that Su-57 is on a similar level to J-20. I expect Su-57 to be further refined with time of course, but at present the situation imo is what it is.
 
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