China approves plan to build large jet to rival Boeing
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(Agencies via Today) Watch out Boeing and Airbus.
China has approved a plan to build large passenger aircraft to compete with Boeing and Airbus, which together currently dominate the country's fast-growing aviation market.
The decision was made at a meeting of the Cabinet presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao after listening to details of a feasibility study on the project, the State Council said in a statement posted on the government's website yesterday.
The plan is to "design and build airplanes that can carry more than 150 passengers and compete with Airbus and Boeing", according to the state-run China Daily.
The newspaper reported that the decision followed a report by a group set up six months earlier to research the feasibility of the project.
No timeframe was given, but there had been hints.
Last week, a top official of state-owned China Aviation Industry Corporation I — a major aerospace company — said that the company planned to start making large aircraft by 2020 to reduce its reliance on foreign manufacturers.
"As a country with a huge demand for large-sized planes, it is absolutely unimaginable to rely on imports of aero-engines for long," Mr Liu Daxiang, the company's deputy chief of science and technology, told the China Daily.
China's new-generation engines must be more powerful than those in use in current Airbus or Boeing aircraft, Mr Liu said.
In yesterday's statement, the Cabinet also said that it had approved a plan to set up a company to manufacture large aircraft.
China has the technical and material capabilities to develop large aircraft, having been building its aviation industry for 50 years, the statement said.
China's experience has so far been limited to manufacturing smaller, regional aircraft, with the ARJ-21, holding up to 105 seats, expected to begin delivery in 2009, according to state media.
According to the latest market outlook from China Aviation Corp I, China will need 2,230 large aircraft by 2025.
This forecast comes on the back of impressive growth rates in civil aviation in China, fuelled by an economy that expanded by 10.7 per cent last year.
Some 160 million passengers flew on Chinese airlines last year, an increase of 15 per cent on the previous year, according to previously released local aviation statistics.
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I think it won't be surprising that China will be using their home-made aircraft to serve at least their domestic market in years to come.
Jus my 2 cents -
I won't be surprised if they build good airplanes 20 years down the line ....
but till they get there, I wouldn't want to ride on one of those planes ...
if the cherry QQ car you're riding in goes kaput, you open the door and walk out ...
if the "cherry QQ" plane you're flying in goes kaput, there won't be enough left of you to stuff into a lup cheong ...
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i distinctly remembered that the ARJ is a reverse engineered MD or similar?
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all passengers must wear parachutes.
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Yup, there's definitely more than a passing resemblance to the MD-8x/DC-9 series...Originally posted by Pitot:
WTH?? Is that the inside of a shopping mall in front of the aircraft?Originally posted by Pitot: -
i think china should be able to churn out gd planes in 15 years time
if everything fail, there is always tearing apart a boeing or a airbus to find out what make it tick
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Expensive investmentOriginally posted by Kenashi:there is always tearing apart a boeing or a airbus to find out what make it tick -
it's not as easy as it seems ....Originally posted by Kenashi:i think china should be able to churn out gd planes in 15 years time
if everything fail, there is always tearing apart a boeing or a airbus to find out what make it tick
I believe they tore apart a few 737s in the 80s to try to reverse engineer it, but abandoned the effort .....