Dream and pain of the hottest aircraft project

Dream and pain of large aircraft project

China's large aircraft manufacturing and selling are completely different missions. The difficulty of selling it is no less than the height from the earth to the moon that Zhang Qingwei is familiar with

the large aircraft project is the most troublesome reporting area for those who pay attention to the aviation industry. First, its confidentiality. Second, the two entities that operate this project are very low-key

China Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC) is responsible for the development of large military transport aircraft (Universiade for short). This central enterprise keeps a low profile to not disclose the specific R & D enterprise of Universiade. The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, which is responsible for the development of large civil airliners (hereinafter referred to as "big passenger"), was complained of being a yamen because it did not like to deal with the outside world

at present, all reports about big passengers in the big aircraft project are fragmentary records. For example, the construction of the test runway has begun, and the composite technology has made a breakthrough. In November, 11 prototypes of the front section of the fuselage will appear at the Zhuhai Air Show. These fragments are like rivets on airplanes. After collecting tens of thousands of them, it is expected to lift domestic large airplanes into the blue sky

AVIC made no mention of the progress of the Universiade project. However, due to the technical connectivity between the Universiade and the Universiade and the decision-making level's arrangement for military and civilian planning, the two schedules of the Universiade and the Universiade overlap greatly. The news confirmed by COMAC is that at present, the large aircraft is facing the support of the majority of users for our company in the global selection of important components. If there is no accident, the first flight of domestic large passenger aircraft named C919 will be realized in 2014, and it will be able to be delivered to users in 2016

in fact, this news was disclosed by BusinessWeek as early as 2007. In March of that year, the State Council officially announced the establishment of a large aircraft project with huge cost. The reason why this government picked up the large aircraft project that has been forgotten for many years is that the characteristics of the aviation industry as the flower of modern industry are becoming more and more obvious; Second, the decision-making level wants to launch the large aircraft project as a demonstration project for China's construction of innovation

after the large aircraft project was approved, BusinessWeek quickly disclosed a large number of project implementation details with the cover story of "decrypting China's large aircraft project". We can't do without the support of Professor Lu Feng from the school of government and management of Peking University in our interview breakthroughs and the accumulation of network resources in the large aircraft project

as early as 2005, business published Professor Lu Feng's "Research Report on the development strategy of China's large aircraft" on the cover story, lamenting the embarrassing history of China's large aircraft project, and calling on China to implement the R & D project of large aircraft as soon as possible. The background of the report is that although large aircraft was once again included in the major projects of the national medium and long-term scientific and technological development plan in 2004, there are still many disputes. Moreover, this is not the first time that the large aircraft project has been included in the work plan by the decision-making level. According to the history of the past decades, the large aircraft project has been unable to start because of endless disputes for many times

it is Professor Lu Feng's solid research and clear narration that enable the public to have an intuitive understanding of the decades of gratitude and resentment and the history of twists and turns around China's large aircraft project. More importantly, the report has become a stepping stone and an important business card for the magazine to accumulate resources in the aviation industry

the leading advantage in reporting makes many people in the aviation industry willing to make their own voice through the platform of business week, but not all people in the aviation industry agree with Lu Feng's point of view. Some people think that Lu Feng is a scholar's spirit. In their view, China's current 7 (9) layer composite extrusion production line can produce better and thicker flexible packaging materials, which does not have the technical conditions and international environment for the development of large passenger aircraft. The reason is that the technical difficulty of the large aircraft project is too great, and once the development is started, it will face the siege of Boeing and Airbus. It is better to buy foreign aircraft directly. Moreover, even if it is made, if it can't be sold, it will only repeat the embarrassment of China's real first large aircraft Yunshi nearly 40 years ago, and can't realize commercialization and industrialization

the mentality of developing civil aircraft within the system stems from the difficulties of the civil aircraft industry and the embarrassing history of past efforts that ended in failure. In their view, the civil aircraft industry is an industry with high risks and poor luck. The development of civil aircraft projects is not only a test of technology, capital and market capacity, but also a test of management, philosophy, will and system

some people agree with Lu Feng's point of view, but it is suggested to launch the large military transport aircraft project first, at least at the same time. First, it is convenient for military and civilian use; Second, most of the people who hold this view come from military aircraft manufacturing enterprises in the aviation industry, and they hope to take the opportunity to strive for the dominance of the development of large passenger aircraft

these two groups of people are almost members of several rounds of large aircraft project experts and program demonstration teams established by the State Council in 2003. Due to the influence of the report, Professor Lu Feng was also absorbed into the preliminary demonstration group

this cover story has become the starting point for our magazine and media colleagues to pay attention to the topic of big aircraft. Since 2005, the debate and openness of the game between the interest classes and decision-makers around the large aircraft project has provided a rich mine for the media. This magazine has also become one of the important public opinion battlefields of debate. These debates include whether to go to the big plane project? Branch line or trunk line first? Where is the location? Military or civilian projects first? And the game includes, who will dominate? Is it to build large aircraft within the existing aviation system, or to start a new business

debate and game make decision-makers hesitant. The decision-making level was originally inclined to launch the large passenger plane project as soon as possible, but the aviation industry system has a lot of doubts and objections. Even if the big passenger project starts again, if the aviation industry system is not awesome, the project will also be difficult

in the end, the decision-making level the water. That is, while setting up a new company as the main body of the mass transit project, it agrees to launch the mass transit project, and the aviation industry system will lead the project research and development. The two projects were launched together to carve up the 5billion and 60billion yuan of research and development funds invested by the state in the early stage. This is also the main content of the large aircraft project officially approved in March 2007

after a year of expert argumentation and scheme game, all parties finally reached a compromise. On May 11, 2008, COMAC was officially established in Shanghai, becoming the main body of China's large and medium-sized passenger aircraft project. Within the system, AVIC took out its ARJ21 regional airliner project, which has been developing for many years but has not been progressing smoothly, and handed it over to COMAC. As compensation, the decision-making level handed over the Universiade project to the aviation industry enterprises within the system, while emphasizing to support AVIC to play an important role in large passenger aircraft projects

in the game about large aircraft projects, AVIC, which won the foundation, but lost face, began to learn from the pain. After six months of careful preparation, AVIC 1 and AVIC 2, which were merged, were listed and established on November 6, 2008

a new round of game is set off again with the birth of new AVIC. At a time when COMAC was just founded and was still looking for a feeling, AVIC accelerated its catch-up, with a view to completely breaking the vicious circle of repeated integration of China's aviation industry system from a pile of potatoes to a sack of potatoes and then to a pile of potatoes

therefore, AVIC proposed two integration in 2008: integration into the world aviation industry chain and integration into the regional development economic circle. These layouts, which are closely integrated with the local economy, are entirely an early response to the State Council's decision to mobilize the enthusiasm of local governments and enterprises for the large passenger aircraft project. After nearly half a year of silence, COMAC also began to make efforts, mainly by taking over the ARJ21 regional airliner project to get familiar with the situation and find feelings

until today, the two companies have sneaked for two years according to their own tracks. In the past two years, AVIC has been digesting the problems brought by integration and preparing for further institutional reform. It should be said that in exploring a capitalization operation, industrialization development mode and platform suitable for the development of China's aviation industry, AVIC has become more and more aware

COMAC is also actively cultivating its system integration ability and supplier management ability as a civil aircraft manufacturer. Moreover, we are consciously taking advantage of the special background of being born outside the system and specialized in the development of civil aircraft, and attach importance to learning from the experience of foreign counterparts. All these are necessary lessons for consolidating the foundation of China's large-scale civil aircraft development platform

COMAC seems confident about the future. This can be seen from its name C919 for China's first domestic airliner in the future. Among them, C is the first letter of China, and also the first letter of the Chinese Commercial English abbreviation COMAC. The first 9 means forever, and 19 represents China's first large passenger aircraft, with a maximum passenger capacity of 190 seats. The future model after C919 can be named c929, and the maximum passenger capacity of this model is 290 seats. Another implication of this name since 2017 is the ambition to enter the international large passenger aircraft market and form an ABC coexisting pattern with Airbus and Boeing in the international large passenger aircraft manufacturing industry

many people in the industry attribute COMAC's confidence to the fact that most of its management comes from the aerospace system and is used to success. In fact, COMAC's confidence is also related to the external environment. An important challenge against the launch of the large aircraft project at that time was that the international environment was very bad, and Boeing and Airbus would join hands to block it. At present, it seems that it has not happened

according to the existing reports on COMAC, the project went smoothly and was in harmony with Boeing and Airbus. However, there are two problems that cannot be ignored by COMAC

on the one hand, the temporary lack of pressure and cooperation is still out of commercial interests. From a global perspective, the development trend of the international aviation industry is competition and cooperation. You have me, I have you. Generally speaking, in the future, many important components of China's domestic large aircraft will be purchased from stakeholders of Boeing and Airbus. The most typical is that the engines of domestic large aircraft need to be purchased from engine giants General Motors and Rolls Royce or their two related joint ventures, which are closely related to Boeing and Airbus, at least for a long time

on the other hand, not suppressing now does not mean not hanging in the future. Throughout the history and means of Boeing and Airbus' joint strangulation of countries trying to develop large passenger aircraft projects such as Japan and Indonesia in the past few decades, as well as various dazzling means when Boeing and Airbus played chess. It is not difficult to find that, in addition to strangling the project in the cradle, it is more difficult to deal with the wedge-shaped translational and manual rotary clamping, and sniping through trade war and commercial war after the aircraft is developed. An important confidence of the decision-making level in the development of large aircraft is to see the success of Airbus, but don't forget that Airbus crawled out of the dead and was subsidized by many European governments for nearly 30 years