COMAC left the tarmac, landed in a different country, and put Boeing and Airbus on notice that it\u2019s coming for them, though it won\u2019t get there fast.<\/p>\n
Last week, a C919 aircraft built by the state-backed Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) completed an international commercial flight, departing from Beijing and arriving in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. That\u2019s only some 750 miles, or roughly the distance from New York City to Jacksonville, Florida. But for China\u2019s homegrown aerospace industry, it\u2019s a leap into the stratosphere, marking the first time a COMAC aircraft has completed an international commercial trip. Just don\u2019t start thinking the company is flying as high as Boeing and Airbus. Yet, anyway.<\/p>\n
Assembled in China<\/p>\n
Milestones aside, it\u2019s still better to think of the C919 as \u201cAssembled in China,\u201d and not exactly \u201cMade in China.\u201d Honeywell has supplied components including brakes and flight control packages. Collins Aerospace has supplied avionics. And the engine comes from a joint venture between GE Aerospace and the France-based Safran Aircraft Engines. The diverse and international supply chain, unsurprisingly, has its drawbacks. For instance, said engine was ensnared by export controls for multiple weeks at the height of last year\u2019s trade war.<\/p>\n
The supply chain turbulence has long prevented COMAC\u2019s production capacity from reaching cruising speeds:<\/p>\n
While hard data remains opaque, some reports suggest COMAC delivered as few as 15 C919 planes<\/a> to customers last year. That\u2019s well short of its goal of 75, and nowhere near the 600 and 793 aircraft delivered by Boeing and Airbus, respectively.<\/p>\n The company may have delivered only three planes in the first quarter of the year amid more production delays, according to a report<\/a> by the South China Morning Post. It had previously set a goal of delivering 200 planes annually by 2029.<\/p>\n