The U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing has announced the delivery of 480 planes in 2022. Its biggest competitor Airbus (also known as Airbus) will deliver a total of 661 aircraft in comparison. This is the fourth consecutive year that Boeing has lagged behind Airbus.
The gap between Boeing and Airbus also happened the Chinese market. Boeing delivered only 8 aircraft to China, while Airbus delivered more than 100 in the year of 2022. China’s three major state-owned airlines agreed to buy 292 Airbus planes in July last year. In November, China Aviation Supplies Corporation announced that it had signed a bulk purchase agreement for 140 Airbus aircraft in Beijing during German Chancellor Scholz’s visit to China. The purchase agreement includes 8 A350s and 132 A320 series airliners with a total value of about 17 billion US dollars.
Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft were grounded by China in March 2019 after the crash for nearly four years. Chinese airlines had 97 of the planes before the 2019 grounding. Boeing said there are 138 planes being built for Chinese airlines waiting to be delivered. Boeing has begun reselling them to other airlines due to Chinese airlines will accept the planes in the short term. Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun said he hopes to eventually deliver more planes in China, but “it’s really hard to find signals that things are going to change in China and move toward in our direction”.
Boeing airplanes add insult to injury because of the epidemic.
The Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 are two large passenger aircraft in most demand worldwide. Chinese airline orders account for about a quarter of the global market demand. International flight passenger traffic in China has been irregular in 2022 as a result of the epidemic. Monthly passenger traffic is only equivalent to 5% of the same period in 2019.
China released its epidemic control at the end of November last year and announced the liberalization of entry restrictions on January 8 this year. The tourism industry started rebounded as the last Spring Festival holiday approached. According to official Chinese data, 52,713,400 domestic tourism trips were made during the 2023 New Year’s Day holiday, recovering to 42.8% of the same period of the 2019 New Year’s Day holiday on a comparable basis.
Several Chinese airlines are rapidly increasing the number of international flights. In this background, the demand for aircraft has also risen.
Another background is the delivery of China’s domestic large aircraft. The first domestic large aircraft C919 developed by COMAC was delivered to China Eastern Airlines on December 9 last year.
The Comac C919 is a narrow-body airliner developed by Chinese aircraft manufacturer Comac after 14 years of research and development. The C919 is China’s first large passenger aircraft developed in accordance with international airworthiness standards with a maximum range of approximately 5,500 kilometers. The C919 has 158 to 168 seats in the cabin with six seats in a row. The Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 also have the same layout.
Although the C919 is called the “China-made aircraft,” it still relies heavily on components from Western companies such as the LEAP-1C engine jointly developed by General Motors and Safran. However, China is also developing its own “Changjiang-1000A” aero engine which has not yet been officially installed for test flights.
One huge advantage in China is that it has the domestic market. The C919 has just been delivered and there are already more than 1,000 open orders for it with customers including major Chinese airlines and aircraft leasing companies.
China Eastern Airlines has disclosed that the C919 costs $99 million, compared with around $110 million and $120 million for similar aircraft from Airbus and Boeing. COMAC expects global passenger aircraft deliveries exceed 40,000 over the next 20 years with the value of $6.4 trillion.
China will be the largest market for new aircraft deliveries. The Chinese market will receive 9,284 jetliners, including 958 regional jets, 6,288 single-aisle jets and 2,038 dual-aisle jets. The Chinese airline market will become the largest single airline market in the world.