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Big-plane dream fraught with difficulties China's ambition of building a large passenger jet by 2020 could be fraught with difficulties, not least competition from global giants Airbus and Boeing, experts said. Aviation officials said last week that China should act now to build a 150-200 seat 'trunk liner' to cater for booming domestic demand, as Boeing and Airbus were busy developing bigger planes. "If China does not roll out its own trunk liner by 2020, then the country will not succeed in 2030 or 2040. So it is really a rush," said Liu Daxiang, a senior official with China Aviation Industry Corporation AVIC I.
"Clearly the most significant barrier will still be Boeing and Airbus who have been building these kinds of aircraft for decades," said Dirk Sadubin, an expert with the Sydney-based Centre for Asia-Pacific Aviation. China, which is still trying to develop a market for domestically built 70- to- 90-seat regional jets, was a long way off matching Boeing and Airbus' efficiencies in design, marketing, branding and after-sale service, he said. But "China has the advantage of low labor costs, so if they convert that into an accepted format of aircraft, they could have a good response from airlines looking to lower costs", Sadubin said. "A Chinese-built plane would also get help from the government's state purchasing system, with Chinese airlines likely to be urged to buy the domestic aircraft." Still, China would need tremendous capital and political will to successfully compete against the giant manufacturers, while getting an aircraft certified internationally would not be easy either, he said. "The current information indicates there is no formal plan for launching the large aircraft program yet," said one Western industry source who supplies equipment to China's aviation industry. "However, it is very clear the government realizes the development of the large transport aircraft is one of the critical strategic technologies for advancing the country to the next level of aviation excellence, just like the Chinese space program," the source said. Recommendations to build the plane came in a report to the government last year and also stressed that hardware design and technological skills should be secondary to the modern management capabilities needed to organize production and integrate aviation systems, he said. Even if China decides to go ahead with the project, any large jetliner would likely need a lot of Western input, not only in the design but also in engines and avionics, said Robert Karniol, East Asia editor for Jane's Defense Weekly. "Avionics and engines are not areas that China is strong in," Karniol said. "For this kind of plane both the avionics and engines, and quite likely the design, they will probably have to look to foreign suppliers." China's best military planes are foreign-built, while the top home-produced military jets rely on Russian and British engines and Western avionics and designs, he said. Last week's announcement is not the first time that China has expressed hopes of building a large passenger jet. Earlier this decade efforts to establish a joint venture company to build a short-haul 100-seat aircraft with Airbus and then with a South Korean consortium ended at the negotiation table. Meanwhile, AVIC I's joint venture with McDonald-Douglas to produce the
150-seat MD-90 was discontinued after Boeing took over the US aircraft
maker.
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