Chinese Aviation Industry
- Thread starter FriedRiceNSpice
- Start date
Which one has become the 100th? Due to planespotters.net there were delivery flights of ARJ21 MSN 202 (B-653D) on 29 Dec 2022 and MSN 213 (B-653M) on 30 Dec 2022, both for Air China, but these were 97th and 98th ARJ21s delivered. By the way the delivery ceremony of the 100th ARJ21 could happen several days (and even weeks) before its delivery flight to be recorded by fr24.com, etc.
lcloo
Captain
According to Chinese wikipedia:-
The 100th ARJ-21 delivered is B-653M to Air China on Dec 29th (also reported by Baidu百度, Flightaware.com and Aviacionline.com). The 99th jet B-653J was delivered on Dec 28th.
The 97th and 98th jets were delivered to OTT Airlines 一二三航空 on 2022 Dec 26th, reg# B-653Q and B-653V.
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Shares in Avic Heavy Machinery advanced as much as 4.7 percent today after the Chinese aviation equipment supplier said it will build an aerospace materials and components industrial park costing around CNY7 billion (USD1 billion).
Avic Heavy’s share price [SHA:600765] closed up 2.9 percent at CNY32.02 (USD4.65). Earlier in the day it reached CNY32.58.
The industrial park, which will be located in the Guizhou Shuanglong Airport Economic Zone in Guiyang, southwestern Guizhou province, will be comprised of a company headquarters, a research center and several production lines for precision aviation materials and components, Avic Heavy said on Dec. 30.
Avic Heavy specializes in forgings, castings and hydraulic components that are widely applied in the sectors of aerospace, new energy and engineering machinery. By being located in the Guizhou Shuanglong Airport Economic Zone, the Beijing-based firm will get to participate in high-end industrial projects in the area and extend its business scope, it said.
The facility will be built in four phases and should be fully up and running by 2030, the company said. Construction on the first phase, costing CNY930 million (USD135 million), already started late last year and will continue until 2024, it said. The subsequent phases will each take two years to build and will cost CNY1.6 billion (USD239.7 million), CNY2.3 billion and CNY2 billion respectively.
No idea when did this happened.
2023.1.6
Model: ARJ21-700 CCF
Typical cruise speed: 0.78 Mach
Maximum commercial load: 10 t
Design range: 2748 km
Video link:
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From a well known Weibo account on CR929
In the background of Russian/Ukraine war, American gov't will have an easier excuse to sanction a project with Russians as equal partners.
Reasons for why Russia can't carry on with this as lead designer, but may become a supplier.
Russia cannot develop satisfying engine. PD35 originally planned for CR929 is beyond the capabilities of Russian aero engine industry and do not have the resources to develop is due to ongoing war. The resource need to be expanded in war effort.
pre-Ukraine, plan was for Russia to pitch to friendly countries like India, Middle East, central Asia and park of Africa. Due to fear over US sanction, this is no longer possible. China has to do all the sales pitch
In terms of supply chain, China/Russia cooperation will definitely be sanctioned by Western countries. But it is still necessary to use Western equipment in order to obtain their flight certificates. Russian joint development will make this more complicated.
In the background of Russian/Ukraine war, American gov't will have an easier excuse to sanction a project with Russians as equal partners.
As such, Russian role in CR929 is like to be as a major supplier rather than as a joint partner.
Kind of true but not really. I already explained this here. The Canadian company responsible for designing the PD-14 engine test stand at Perm for Aviadvigatel was also supposed to design the PD-35 test stand. The PD-14 engine test stand took longer than expected to get into service. And you can guess what happened to the Canadian company's participation in the PD-35 test stand with the sanctions.
Aviadvigatel is supposed to repurpose an older engine test stand available near them to test the whole PD-35 on the ground. But this will take time to put into service. The engine design itself is basically ready, Aviadvigatel also tested the gas generator on a separate test bench and it worked fine, so like 70% of the risk has been retired, since this means the high temperature part of the engine works fine. The composite fan blades were tested in a subscale PD-14 engine and should work fine as well.
The Aviadvigatel chief thought the government would not give them increased funding for the PD-35 test campaign because of these delays. That the money would be reallocated to the new factory building for expanded PD-14 engine construction for the MC-21, now that the Pratt & Whitney engine for MC-21 is not available, and Russia needs to build more aircraft of this type than expected. Because Boeing and Airbus won't be selling more airplanes to them either also because of sanctions. But the Russian government later increased the funding for PD-35 with a specific budget allocation for it after the chief gave that talk to the press and increased budget allocation to make the PD-14 engine factory. So the problem is not lack of money. It is because there is no test stand for the whole engine. You can pretty much bet they will have an engine to test, ready and made, when the test stand is available in probably 2 years time. Instead of them waiting for the test stand to be available to actually build it.
The Russians have been dispersing funding for as many parallel tests for engines as possible, since the sanctions happened, to get the products out faster. One proof of this is they immediately started PD-8 flight tests after the ground tests finished. They had already manufactured the engine nacelle and probably a separate engine for air test even before the ground tests were finished. Supposedly the PD-8 engine is 12 months ahead of schedule because of this.
Maybe for India and some Middle Eastern countries this would apply. But I do not see how China needs Russian help to sell the C929 to African or Central Asian countries.
It will be sanctioned to hell and back sooner or later. Boeing and Airbus do not play fair. Especially Boeing. Just see what happened with Bombardier. And that was just a peripheral low margin part of Boeing's business, not their bread and butter.
The C929 is going to compete with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner which is probably the main profit engine for Boeing at this time.
What Russia can do though, is apply counter sanctions to Boeing and Airbus where companies flying their aircraft over Russian airspace have to either pay extra taxes for flying over Russian territory, or just become unable to fly over it at all.
Yes that is what I said was going to happen in the first place. Russia is going to move from partner to contractor. And if even then they sanction the aircraft because it has parts made in Russia then the Russians will just move production facilities for those parts inside Chinese territory. UAC already said the production plant for the wings might either be built in the Russian Far East or China and they have not decided on a location yet.
The Russians seem to also want the Chinese to build an aircraft with Russian and Chinese components that they can use. And I think it would benefit China to do this. The sooner they have a component base not reliant on Western components supplies the better. Western companies are unreliable as was seen with the Western sanctions on Russia where they do not even provide parts and supply to the aircraft they sold, and they retained Russian aircraft doing maintenance in Europe. China already got Canadian Pratt & Whitney engines denied to the MA700 and COMAC put into a US government blacklist, there are extremely high chances COMAC will also get sanctioned similarly to what happened with Russia.
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I do not know what you mean by "dragging their feet". Like I said Russia built and tested a full size PD-35 engine gas generator. They also did scaled down subcomponent tests for the rest of the engine. Several wind tunnel tests were made in Russia. A scaled prototype wing was built. Russia just wants there to be a version of the aircraft free of Western components sooner rather than later.
If a version of the CR929 aircraft without Western components is not produced in the foreseeable future, then Russia will install the PD-35 engines on a new wing under a Il-96 body and produce that for themselves. Of course if China wants Russian components they will be supplied as well. If everything goes according to plan, then you would expect the PD-35 to be available for installation on an aircraft in 4 years time. Two years so they build the test stand, one year to do the ground tests, and another year to do captive carry tests. I would not be surprised if there was backsliding on that schedule by 1-2 years given possible unforeseen eventualities though.
You can bet Russia will build an engine in that payload class. They need it for the An-124 and its replacement. And the government is going full hog on PD-35 development together with Izdeliye RF. The only question is when will it happen. At this rate Izdeliye RF will be available before the PD-35 which is unexpected but such is life.
If a version of the CR929 aircraft without Western components is not produced in the foreseeable future, then Russia will install the PD-35 engines on a new wing under a Il-96 body and produce that for themselves. Of course if China wants Russian components they will be supplied as well. If everything goes according to plan, then you would expect the PD-35 to be available for installation on an aircraft in 4 years time. Two years so they build the test stand, one year to do the ground tests, and another year to do captive carry tests. I would not be surprised if there was backsliding on that schedule by 1-2 years given possible unforeseen eventualities though.
You can bet Russia will build an engine in that payload class. They need it for the An-124 and its replacement. And the government is going full hog on PD-35 development together with Izdeliye RF. The only question is when will it happen. At this rate Izdeliye RF will be available before the PD-35 which is unexpected but such is life.
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