The industrialization and large-scale development of large aircraft have entered a new stage, and the batch production and delivery of C919 will be accelerated in 2024

Interface News Reporter | Xue Bingbing

On March 29, the 2024 Shanghai Global Investment Promotion Conference was held in the World Meeting Room. At the meeting, a total of 10 key industrial chain subdivisions such as large models, humanoid robots, wide bandgap semiconductors, large aircraft, large cruise ships, and commercial aerospace were released, and 21 key projects were also signed on the spot, with a total investment of 52.4 billion yuan.

As the "important weapon of the country" and the crown of modern manufacturing, the headquarters base of large aircraft is located in Shanghai. Therefore, Shanghai is also known as the birthplace of the large aircraft industry. The day before the investment promotion conference, COMAC, a large aircraft manufacturer, held the 2024 COMAC Supplier Conference and the Civil Aviation Industry Promotion Conference in the Lingang New Area to discuss the key tasks in the next stage and work together to promote the new process of industrialization and large-scale development of large aircraft.

"The commercial launch of the C919 on May 28, 2023 is a day that will go down in the history of the global commercial aircraft industry and a day that we have been looking forward to for 15 years. He Dongfeng, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of COMAC, said in his speech.

He Dongfeng said that now, the large-scale development of COMAC and the operation of aircraft routes have entered a new stage, and at the same time, we are also facing new challenges, and we must always strengthen our confidence in China's civil air transport market. It is necessary to continue to deepen cooperation, not only to further consolidate and strengthen cooperation on existing projects, but also to actively explore and expand cooperation on new projects, and to jointly respond to challenges, focus on quality and safety, production capacity improvement, product optimization, operation guarantee and other challenges, and jointly make new contributions to the prosperity and development of the global commercial aircraft industry.

Won thousands of orders, emerging in the global large aircraft market

2023 is the first year of commercial passenger operation of the domestic large aircraft C919. On May 28 of that year, China Eastern Airlines, the world's first user, launched its first commercial flight of the C919, and since then, China Eastern Airlines has received four C919s from COMAC. At present, the five aircraft delivered have been put on the Shanghai Hongqiao-Chengdu Tianfu and Shanghai Hongqiao-Beijing Daxing routes for normal operation.

From the perspective of operational performance, China Eastern Airlines revealed that from the first commercial operation to February 29, 2024, the cumulative commercial flight time of China Eastern Airlines' C919 fleet has exceeded 3,272 hours, 1,131 commercial flights, and more than 145,000 passengers. Li Yangmin, General Manager of China Eastern Airlines, commented: "Since the official commercial operation of the C919, the overall operation has been safe, stable and orderly, showing good safety, reliability and comfort. ”

It is precisely by virtue of its safe and reliable market performance that COMAC has ushered in more large orders purchased or added by airlines.

At the plenary meeting of the Pujiang Innovation Forum on September 10 last year, He Dongfeng, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of COMAC, revealed that the current number of orders for C919 has reached 1,061. On the 22nd of the same month, during the ASEAN Expo, Brunei Qiji Airlines placed orders for 30 aircraft, including 15 C919s, and at the end of the same month, China Eastern Airlines announced that it had ordered 100 C919 large passenger aircraft to COMAC, which was the largest single order received by C919 so far.

In February 2024, COMAC will participate in the Singapore Airshow, the largest airshow in Asia, with the domestically produced large aircraft C919, which is the first time that the C919 has flown out of the country to participate in the international airshow. During the period, COMAC announced a new order, Tibet Airlines will become the global launch user of the C919 high prototype, and order 40 C919 high prototype aircraft from COMAC.

The influx of orders from domestic and foreign airlines not only proves the success of the C919 product, but also provides strong support for COMAC to explore the global large aircraft market.

For a long time, the global aviation manufacturing industry has been divided into two giants: Boeing and Airbus. Although it has been more than seven years since COMAC ARJ21 was officially put into commercial use, it is far from being a regional jet that can shake the status of established aircraft manufacturers in Europe and the United States.

The C919 is a medium-haul mainline airliner designed for the 150-seat single-aisle narrow-body market. Single-aisle narrow-body aircraft are the mainstream aircraft in the global aviation market. At present, COMAC has delivered 5 C919s, and plans to deliver more C919s to customers of many airlines such as China Eastern Airlines, Air China, and Suparna Airlines, a subsidiary of Hainan Airlines, this year. This also means that in the single-aisle mainline aircraft market, the C919 is gradually becoming a competitive force to be reckoned with.

When speeding up and expanding production is "in progress", quality and safety are the core

After the number of orders is increasing, COMAC has put forward higher requirements for supply chain management capabilities and production efficiency. Capacity planning and speed of delivery are also a major concern for airline customers, and can even affect airlines' choice when ordering aircraft.

Spring Airlines' fleet is all narrow-body Airbus A320 family aircraft. Before the National People's Congress and the National People's Congress were held on March 1 this year, Spring Airlines Chairman Wang Yu shared the proposal of the two sessions with the media, during which he was asked whether he would consider ordering C919 large aircraft in the future. Wang Yu responded that the company has been paying close attention to the movement of domestic large aircraft, but at present, COMAC has thousands of orders in its hands, and there is certain pressure on delivery. Therefore, Spring Airlines is still in the wait-and-see stage and will consider it when the time is right.

In fact, in response to the ramp-up of production capacity, COMAC has also made many statements since last year. On January 12, 2023, Zhang Yujin, member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and Deputy General Manager of COMAC, said: "The C919 large aircraft will accelerate the expansion of production and seize market share. The annual production capacity is planned to reach 150 aircraft in the next five years. On January 24 this year, at the scene of the two sessions in Shanghai, Zhang Yujin once again revealed that in 2024, it is expected that C919 production capacity will continue to gradually expand and grow steadily, so as to achieve "how fast and good" production will be. At the same time, it is planned to invest tens of billions of yuan in three to five years to expand production capacity.

However, for aircraft manufacturers, it is important to speed up and expand production, but the quality and safety of aircraft manufacturing are the core qualities.

According to the official website of COMAC, the Party Committee of COMAC must deploy two things of "quality and safety" and "customers" every New Year, and 2024 is the sixth year. On January 2 this year, COMAC held a special meeting on quality and safety work in 2024 to study and judge the company's quality and safety situation, analyze risks and challenges, and discuss annual goals and key tasks.

He Dongfeng, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of COMAC, said that in 2024, the company will face challenges brought about by the increase in the number of customers, the expansion of the scope of operation, the acceleration of batch production and delivery, and the coexistence of multiple models and multiple states, and the pressure on quality and safety should not be underestimated.

In view of the quality and safety work in 2024, He Dongfeng requested that we should pay close attention to safety management, conscientiously implement the eight action items on safety management, solidly promote the "three-year action to tackle the root cause of safety production", and improve the "dual prevention mechanism" to ensure product safety, production safety, flight test safety, and operation safety. It is necessary to strengthen professional capacity building, build a strong quality and safety expert management team, equip professional technology, professional equipment, and professional teams, give full play to the role of industry experts, improve tools and methods, and accelerate digital transformation.

Accelerate the improvement of local supply chain supporting capacity

According to the surging news report, domestic large aircraft are developing steadily in accordance with the path of "Chinese design, system integration, global bidding, and gradual improvement of localization", and has now entered the critical stage of "gradually improving localization", and it is urgent to focus on improving the resilience and safety level of the large aircraft industry chain. It is estimated that by 2026, there will be about 150 local supporting suppliers and partners in the large aircraft industry chain, and the scale of the large aircraft industry will reach about 80 billion yuan.

"Shanghai should focus on creating a world-class business environment, and sincerely invite domestic large aircraft supporting enterprises to invest in Shanghai. Liu Ping, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, said at the COMAC 2024 Supplier Conference. Aiming to build a market-oriented, law-based and international first-class business environment, Shanghai has released version 7.0 of the action plan for optimizing the business environment, and has launched more than 1,100 reform measures.

At present, Shanghai is seizing the opportunity of speeding up the mass production of large aircraft and developing large-scale serialization. With the large aircraft park as the core carrying place of the world-class civil aviation industry cluster, we will accelerate the agglomeration of most sections of the structure and supporting resources such as composite materials, airborne systems, engines, and manufacturing equipment. Shanghai is currently aiming at the high-end industrial chain of large aircraft, and sincerely invites relevant enterprises to actively participate in the construction of the large aircraft industry chain, focusing on attracting R&D and design, final assembly and manufacturing, test and certification, operation and maintenance and key supporting enterprises to develop in Shanghai.

In terms of policy measures focusing on innovative large aircraft industry, Liu Ping said that in 2021, Shanghai issued the "Three-Year Action Plan for the Construction of Shanghai's Civil Aviation Industry Chain (2022-2024)". In the near future, a number of policies and measures will be released to support the development of the high-end industrial chain of civil large aircraft, and innovative measures will be put forward to strengthen the traction of the main demand of the chain, accelerate the installation and application of supporting products, support enterprises to expand their production capacity, optimize the industrial development ecology, and build a large aircraft park with high standards. Establish a special class for the promotion of the high-end industrial chain of large aircraft coordinated in the urban area, coordinate the promotion of industrial chain support policies and the implementation of major projects, and strive to be the "gold medal shop" serving the enterprises of the large aircraft industry chain.