Time is one factor for money. Fuel costs are another. Going higher speed incurs greater per mile fuel costs when fuel is this expensive. Going faster also induces more mechanical strain on airframes, introducing higher lifetime maintenance and operation costs. What’s holding back development of faster passenger planes is not production scale, but fuel and other operational costs. And as it turns out, the greatest expenses for these planes are not their purchasing cost but their operational cost.
COMAC C929 Widebody Airliner
- Thread starter Iron Man
- Start date
This high speed is part of airplane aerodynamics and material advancements. It is higher cruising speed with competitive economics of cabin and that include fast turn around time of plane. purchase cost was subsidized through low interest and low inflation environment. since there are shortages and inflation. there will no longer will be discounts from Airbus.
Airbaltic is putting 871km/hr cruise speed for A220-300. This is fast for this size of aircraft.
Further Tu-214 upgrades are unlikely. The MC-21-400 will carry a similar amount of passengers. Tu-214 production will be a stop gap until MC-21 enters service in 2-4 years time. The Russians have two production lines, one for Tu-214, another for Tu-204, both are more or less the same aircraft and production can be ramped up quickly as all the tooling is in place. Since they lack aircraft they will be doing that. But they will be switching to the MC-21 as that ramps up. MC-21 is being built at a different facility. Right now they are still replacing the imported component base like avionics in MC-21. The process of making the replacements did not start this year. It has been ongoing for quite a while. But they still need to certify the replacement components and put them into serial production. In contrast Western imports are not an issue with the Tu-204/214.
Russia actually has plans for a supersonic passenger transport. And they might actually build one. The Tu-160M is in production as is its NK-32-02 engine. So the problem is basically making a new airframe. I have seen mockups of it more than once.
Anyway we are getting wildly off-topic here. We know what Manturov talked about. I linked to it in #282 and now you brought an english language AvWeek article. I doubt the content of the original CR929 project schedule will be modified. Manturov was probably just saying that a native version of CR929, without Western content, will be now funded and overall development of other native component base will be sped up and got misinterpreted. Russia can't import Western aircraft components remember? Sanctions.
Russia actually has plans for a supersonic passenger transport. And they might actually build one. The Tu-160M is in production as is its NK-32-02 engine. So the problem is basically making a new airframe. I have seen mockups of it more than once.
Anyway we are getting wildly off-topic here. We know what Manturov talked about. I linked to it in #282 and now you brought an english language AvWeek article. I doubt the content of the original CR929 project schedule will be modified. Manturov was probably just saying that a native version of CR929, without Western content, will be now funded and overall development of other native component base will be sped up and got misinterpreted. Russia can't import Western aircraft components remember? Sanctions.
"Relics". The Tu-214 and Il-96 are rough contemporaries of the Boeing 757 and Airbus A340. Their Boeing and Airbus counterparts are now being retired for fuel efficiency reasons mostly. Guess one thing which Russia has no lack of right now? Fuel. Both aircraft are supposed to be replaced with MC-21 and CR929.
No. The plan was always for three engine options. It is quite common for aircraft to have two engine options. And Russia was never going to force China into buying the PD-35 since the CJ-2000 engine was always part of the plans. It is true there were talks about making a Russo-Chinese engine collaboration before the project started but that fell through pretty quickly as China found other foreign partners for the engine project and they wanted the whole engine cycle. The proposed collaboration would have been something similar to CFM, Engine Alliance, or PowerJet but the Chinese balked at it. It would have been 50-50 partnership with Chinese cold section and Russian hot section scaled up from PD-14. Russia would have given China access to its technology in hollow titanium blades used in Sam146 and PD-14.
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Again I think this was a wild misinterpretation. China will be supplying components to Russia to which they hold intellectual rights. It might be as simple as supplying Russian civil aviation with rivets or composites. Could be titanium sponge. It might be selling civilian small airplanes or helicopters of their own make. The idea China will be breaking the sanctions is kinda bollocks. But if the West tries to apply secondary sanctions on China for merely doing trade with Russia, for products China holds intellectual rights to, I doubt China will take that well. The West would be basically saying they decide who and what China sells their products to, not China. China has a really long tradition of going alone on things like that. If they push China too far I doubt it will end up as the West thinks it will. And the whole idea the West seems to have, that if they sold you a hammer, they can decide what you do with the hammer and who for after they sold it to you, it ain't gonna fly long term. This is workers must own the means of production grade Communism 101.
I guess you missed Putin's 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference. He said that a) Russia would decisively oppose further expansion of NATO in particular to Georgia and Ukraine b) The security architecture in Europe was flawed because NATO was flaunting the spirit of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. And that NATO did not ratify the treaty amendments. i.e. in the late Cold War NATO and the Warsaw Pact agreed to arms limitations in conventional forces in Europe along the NATO/Warsaw Pact border. The limitations were per country. But the treaty was never revised taking into consideration those countries which used to be in Warsaw Pact and were now in NATO. Nor the Soviet breakup. In other words NATO had conventional weapons superiority. Putin explicitly said either that was corrected or Russia would have to adjust its deployed conventional forces to compensate. NATO said some mumbo-jumbo about Russian peacekeepers in Transnistria, a couple thousand soldiers, with no tanks, while they were occupying Kosovo. So, plain bullshit on their part. Thought it was going to be like Yeltsin with the Baltics joining NATO again. Russia would be all bark and no bite. Boy were they wrong. Idiots. Georgian war was 6 months later.
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All is true, except you have to start somewhere, cooperation with Russia is a certain failure and building a fully domestic supply chain is a must, if C-929 is going to be a failure for this, so be it, c-919 is living fine without Russians.
So was the Superjet. Until it wasn't. And mind that the Superjet, when designed, did not compete with Airbus and Boeing. Was kind of a Bombardier and Embraer competitor. Where is Bombardier today? Killed by Boeing. Its product started to overlap with low end of 737 segment. And that is what the US does to their allies. The C919 will be "fine" until it isn't. It is a direct competitor to the A320 and 737 cash cows of the duopoly. At most they will let it live until the moment China starts delivering aircraft to foreign countries or eats too much into their own sales in China.
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You think A-320 and B-737 is dominating the market because they are that good?
No, C-919 will be fine, domestic market is good enough for now, and if we’re going to lose foreign orders for political reasons, cooperation with Russia doesn’t help.
Like I said it helps because Russia has more technical expertise with civilian aircraft manufacturing than China does. They would be able to supply any know-how or components which China does not have yet. It is all about risk reduction. And, like I said, the Russian market itself is not insignificant. Aeroflot alone operates close to 100 A320/1 aircraft and almost 40 737s. The MC-21 was never meant to replace 100% of these aircraft. It was supposed to replace half of them at best, and half of the MC-21 were meant to have Western engines. The market for large aircraft is way smaller, Aeroflot operates over 40 A350/330 or 777s total.
If China manages to make a version of C919 without Western components Russia would likely buy it. Because like I said the MC-21 production line is not dimensioned to replace all their Western aircraft of same type. They plan to expand it but it will require massive investment. Russia at one point, when Medvedev was in power, wanted to have a production facility for Xian MA60 in Russia but it was decided not to go ahead with the project. Back then it had limited technical advantage over older An-26 aircraft still in service. But the major issue was the Western engines made it not cost competitive.
If China manages to make a version of C919 without Western components Russia would likely buy it. Because like I said the MC-21 production line is not dimensioned to replace all their Western aircraft of same type. They plan to expand it but it will require massive investment. Russia at one point, when Medvedev was in power, wanted to have a production facility for Xian MA60 in Russia but it was decided not to go ahead with the project. Back then it had limited technical advantage over older An-26 aircraft still in service. But the major issue was the Western engines made it not cost competitive.
Outdated technology doesn't make sense
We have a lot of engineers, including retired Boeing and Airbus and Antonov, so Russia is pointless
C929 never thought of cooperating with the Russians
It's just Putin's proposal and it turns into politics
Not only will CR929 fail, heavy helicopters will not cooperate with Russia
A lot of inside stories are not as optimistic as you think
95% chance of failure of China-Russia cooperation
You see Chinese propaganda will never show the foreign engineers we hire
But the fact that we do employ a lot of foreign engineers
Agreed that cooperation with Russia is meaningless, no technology, no money, no market
and extremely arrogant
The composite material used in Russia is Zhongfu Condor
But Russia boasted that it was made by itself
The natural gas ship built by the Russian Eastern Shipyard is made in South Korea and used by Russia to boast that it is made in Russia
Some Russian radar originals are imported into China, but Russia also boasts of domestic production
You seriously exaggerate Russian technology, look at Russia in the Ukrainian battlefield hahaha
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
And I quote myself
Claims not Comfirmed reports, however the context comes in as if they were in regards to the “captive” Airbus or Boeing aircraft they would not be Chinese IP.
However we have digressed.
Three engines is a bit wider than the norm and I pointed to three potential lines.
Yet I am also pointing to what has been reported.
This said the 3 is dead at best 2. Well currently Comac is not under prohibition of access to engines, UAC is. CRIAC as a joint venture between Comac and UAC is. So well Comac can put Leap turbofans under the wings of C919 they can’t put a Rolls Royce Trent or GE NX series under the wings of a CR929.
That’s is going to cost in fuel and potentially more established airline buyers. A safe bet on any export market would have been to use the established common airliner engines of a comparable class IE 787 and A350. It would have been a really safe bet on initial flights to. But the Russian relations as they are mean that the CR929 is going to have to start with unknowns on the engines as neither one has flown yet. By 2025? Perhaps they will but that assumes everything comes up sunshine and happiness.
More likely we are looking at a delay on first flight well certification on the engines then delay on production as the delayed flight tests. Then delay on introduction into service by delivery delays.
Engines aren’t the only thing that will now be walled off. Any western systems will. Which will drive farther to question the relationship and force more development of expensive subsystems and substitutes have to be introduced and rated for flight certification in place of established specialty products. That’s going to push the price up.