C919, orders exploded, production capacity surged!

Airwefly

2024-04-29 12:14Published in Guangxi

Air China's announcement on Friday night pushed the three major airlines' actions in support of the C919 aircraft to a climax.

On the same day, the company signed an agreement with COMAC to purchase 100 C919 extended-range aircraft.

This is another airline to announce an order for 100 C919s after China Eastern Airlines purchased an additional 100 C919s in September last year.

Earlier, HNA Aviation Group also signed a purchase agreement with COMAC for 100 aircraft, including an order for 60 C919 aircraft and an order for 40 ARJ21 aircraft. The 60 C919s are planned to be introduced by Urumqi Airlines and Suparna Airlines, which are subsidiaries of HNA Aviation Group, and the two will be divided in half.

Now China Southern Airlines has not officially announced C919 orders, but according to the rhythm of Air China, China Eastern Airlines and Hainan Airlines, the number of C919 orders of China Southern Airlines will not lag behind.

The three major airlines are also the main force to receive the domestic ARj21. By the end of 2023, Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines had 24, 17 and 29 ARJ21 fleets, respectively. According to the calculation of the first aircraft received in June 2020, each family will have a rhythm of 5-7 aircraft per year.

So, what is the rhythm of the airlines that have ordered the C919?

China Eastern Airlines

4 in 2023,

6 in 2024,

10 per year from 2025 to 2027,

15 per year from 2028 to 2030,

In 2031, 20 aircraft are scheduled to be delivered.

Air

6 from 2024 to 2025,

100 aircraft will be delivered in 2031, which is equivalent to 15 aircraft per year from 2026 to 2031.

China Southern Airlines

2024: The first one is planned

The follow-up C919 orders and introduction plans are expected to be less different from those of Air China and China Eastern.

Suparna Airlines, a subsidiary of HNA Airlines

1 in the fourth quarter of 2024,

By the end of 2027, 30 aircraft will be delivered, which is equivalent to an average of 10 aircraft per year for the next three years.

Looking at these four airlines alone, there will be more than 300 C919 deliveries in the next seven years, not counting other airlines and leasing companies that have placed orders.

For COMAC, a total of 4 aircraft will be delivered in 2023, and at least 8 aircraft will be delivered in 2024, and a larger pace of production will be required in the following years.

Of course, such a delivery rhythm is still a drop in the bucket compared to Boeing Airbus.

According to the latest quarterly report disclosed by the two companies, Airbus delivered 142 civil aircraft in the first quarter of this year, including 116 A320 family aircraft, and the company expects to deliver 800 aircraft in 2024, and plans to reach 75 A320 family per month in 2026; Boeing has a decline in 737 deliveries due to well-known problems, but it also produces 38 aircraft per month in the first quarter.

However, according to the aviation and travel circle, COMAC has begun to "gear up" for the production capacity of C919, and the total assembly capacity of C919 will reach 50 by the end of this year.

Zhang Yujin, deputy general manager of COMAC, said in public last year that the C919 is planned to reach 150 aircraft per year in the next five years.

However, COMAC also revealed to the aviation and travel circle that the law of the company's aircraft development is to first increase production capacity and then gradually increase production, and the delivery rhythm of any new research and development aircraft is from small batch delivery to large batch delivery, and the increase in output will also be a slow process.

This is also evident in the delivery cadence of the ARJ21. In June 2016, Chengdu Airlines received the first ARJ21 aircraft, and on December 29, 2022, COMAC delivered the 100th ARJ21 aircraft to the market, which means that it took six years for "Gillian" to achieve mass production and large-scale operation.

At present, COMAC has reached a balanced production beat of 30 ARJ21s per year, and has built an annual production capacity of 50 ARJ21s.

More industry insiders pointed out to the aviation and travel circle that for C919, the initial problem will not be the lack of market, but the challenge of capacity release, supply chain management and service guarantee capabilities.

At present, although the C919 fuselage sections, wings, vertical tail and other structural parts can be guaranteed by the aviation industry and COMAC's subordinate companies, some core components and subsystems are still produced by foreign manufacturers or Sino-foreign joint ventures, and now the tension in the global aircraft manufacturing supply chain still exists, Boeing and Airbus are facing the challenge of delayed delivery of aircraft, and it is expected that it will be alleviated in the next two years.

In addition, new aircraft may be exposed to such and such problems in the operation after delivery, which requires manufacturers to have stable service support capabilities, and provide airlines with a full range of services such as personnel training, operation support, and maintenance support, which are the decisive factors for whether C919 production capacity can be released faster.

As for the future market capacity of C919, some industry insiders have analyzed that the next generation of new narrow-body aircraft with higher performance will not be available until after 2035, close to 2040, so that C919 will have a long stable market cycle. If COMAC can steadily increase production capacity, it is expected to deliver 1,000 to 1,400 C919 aircraft throughout its life cycle.

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