Russian-Chinese wide-body: Program responsibilities

By Bjorn Fehrm

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Introduction

September 29, 2016, ©. Leeham Co: We will now finish our series about the Russian-Chinese wide-body with looking at who will have what role in the program.

Russian-Chinese widebody

Figure 1. Concept for new wide-body airliner. Source: United Aircraft.

As we described in the initial article, "Background and outlook," Russia and China have vastly different competencies when it comes to making a state of the art wide-body aircraft.

Russia has made airliners since the 1930s, including wide-body jets. China did not design its own jet aircraft (military or civil) until the mid-1980s. Most of the aircraft produced still today in China have their origin in Russian designs.

At the same time, we saw in the article about the market demand for the aircraft that the Chinese market is 90% of the home market. This makes for China demanding important parts of the aircraft's production, and China has the money to invest in production facilities.

All this will influence how different parts of the project will be shared between Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) and Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC).

Summary:

  • Russia and China enter the wide-body project with widely different knowledge bases.
  • Russia has long time knowledge on how to develop and produce aircraft and their engines.
  • China on the other hand has the market for the aircraft.
  • China also know a lot about serial production and have money to invest.

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