China is throwing down the gauntlet in the aircraft manufacturing market. The market is dominated by U.S. Boeing and Europe's Airbus, and China is the largest buyer of aircraft, but a Chinese state-owned company's aircraft has succeeded in operating international routes and making overseas deliveries, surpassing 30 million passengers carried. As China increases the share of domestically made products across advanced industries, there are growing concerns that it could speed up securing aircraft technology as well and move to achieve an "aviation rise."
According to the state-run Global Times on the 16th, 175 units of the 100-seat-class passenger jet C909, manufactured by the state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), have been delivered in total, and its operating routes have expanded to 12 countries including Mongolia and Southeast Asian nations. The number of passengers carried has surpassed 30 million.
The Global Times said surpassing 100 aircraft delivered and 10 million passengers carried in the aviation industry marks a turning point into a product that can compete in the market, adding, "The C909, as a pioneer in China's commercial aircraft sector, opened the way forward for the Chinese large aircraft program and laid the groundwork."
According to the report, the C919, a larger single-aisle aircraft than the C909, has been in commercial service for three years. The C919 competes with Boeing's "737 Max" and Airbus's "A320neo," which are used for short- to medium-haul flights. The follow-up model, the C929, recently set a goal to begin commercial flights before 2035.
Summarizing local reports, China launched its commercial aircraft development program in 2002. It completed development of the C909 in 2008, six years later, and then finished the C919 in 2015, seven years after that. The first commercial operation in China was the C919 flying the Shanghai–Beijing route in 2023. It then expanded routes mainly on domestic lines such as Shanghai–Chengdu.
Overseas commercial operations have so far centered on some Southeast Asian countries in the form of leasing, and in July this year a C909 aircraft operated by Air China landed in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, after departing from Inner Mongolia, China. However, this was possible because the route did not have to pass through airspace under the jurisdictions of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), where China-made aircraft have yet to obtain operating approval. Mongolia is also one of the countries where China's influence is strong.
The strength of Chinese-made aircraft is their low price. The C919 is said to cost $100 million (about 147 billion won) per unit, which is roughly 10% cheaper than comparable Boeing and Airbus models.
The Global Times said, "The civil aviation industry is the 'crown' of modern industry, with a clear multiplier effect. It drives breakthroughs in core technologies across dozens of fields, including materials, electronics, manufacturing, and computers, and leads industrial upgrading and job creation," adding, "The aircraft industry, as a national strategic priority, is receiving long-term and stable resource support and policy guarantees (such as the aerospace industry being specified in the '15th Five-Year Plan' proposal)."
However, China's aircraft manufacturing technology still lags far behind the United States and Europe. The Global Times said, "Against the century-long accumulation of Airbus and Boeing, the C909's report card is still only an 'admission ticket,' not a 'merit certificate.' The delivery of 175 units remains a modest level," adding, "The global service network is not yet dense enough, airworthiness certification in Europe and the United States has not been secured, and the localization substitution of core components is still climbing a rough path."
According to Reuters, certification by overseas aviation regulators also has a long way to go. COMAC had initially planned to obtain certification for the C919 from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) within this year, but Secretary-General Florian Guillermet said in a media interview that "it will be difficult to obtain certification within three to six years."