Chinese manufacturers
AIRPORT AMBITIONS Having opened the world’s biggest terminal ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing Capital International Airport is already at full capacity, with 74 million passengers in 2010. The CAAC is planning a second major airport for the city to add capacity for 60 million more passengers. Overall, the country has built 45 new airports in the last four years and plans to build another 52 by 2020, many of them in the less developed central and western regions, bringing the total to 244. In southwest Xinjiang, for example, six new airports are to be built by 2015 as the government seeks to restore the prosperity the region enjoyed in the days of the Silk Road trading route. The authorities have reportedly ordered domestic airlines to start new services linking Xingjiang to China’s bigger cities and want foreign airlines to launch new routes from the regional capital of Urumqi to Istanbul, Dubai, Samarkand, Yekaterinburg and Tbilisi. The old Silk Road trading centre of Kashgar has been singled out for development, with a new economic development zone and talk of making it a western equivalent of the booming east coast city of Shenzhen. Last June, China Southern Airlines launched the country’s longest air route, linking Kashgar with Shenzhen’s neighbouring city of Guangzhou, 4,852km away in the Pearl River Delta.
confi guration, or 5,555km for the extended range version.
An ARJ21 regional jet on the production fl oor at the COMAC facility in Shanghai.
Since its formation, COMAC has continued to develop the ARJ21 regional jet and launched the full-scale development of its own single-aisle airliner, the C919. AVIC’s Xi’an, Chengdu, Shenyang, Harbin and Hongdu subsidiaries are suppliers to the C919 programme. Shenyang Aircraft and Chengdu Aircraft also helped design the ARJ21 and, along with Xi’an Aircraft, supply components. AVIC is a partner in the Tianjing Airbus fi nal assembly line, as well as a major shareholder in COMAC. Intended to carry 168 economy, or 156 two-class passengers, the C919 is due to fl y in 2014, with certifi cation and fi rst deliveries following in 2016. Range will be 4,075km in standard
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Direct operating costs are expected to be 10% less than those of competing types, largely thanks to the lower fuel consumption promised by its CFM LEAP-X1C engines, which are similar to those offered on the upgraded A320NEO and should also help it meet ambitious noise and emissions targets. A wider cabin is another design objective. Orders for the fi rst 100 C919s, announced last November, came from Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, Hainan Airlines, CDB Leasing and US lessor GE Capital Aviation Services. The fi rst 90-seat ARJ21-700 fl ew
for the fi rst time in November 2008. Accommodating up to 90 passengers, it has a range of 2,225km or 3,700km depending on confi guration. It uses GE CF34-10A engines similar to the CF34-10Es that power the Embraer 190 and 195.
Certifi cation test fl ights were continuing in early 2011, with fi rst delivery expected later in the year. COMAC has orders for more than 200 copies and has said it expects to sell 850 over the life of the programme. AVIC Aircraft, the group’s civil arm, is working on a 70-seat turboprop, the Modern Ark 700, having already developed the 56-seat MA60 and MA600 derivatives of the Antonov An-24 via the Xi’an Y-7. A few dozen MA60s have been delivered to foreign as well as domestic operators. The MA600 was certifi ed in May 2010 and the fi rst example was delivered to the Civil Aviation Flight University of China in Guanghan in December. The government of Laos has ordered another three, while China Eastern’s Xian-based subsidiary, Joy Air, is an operator of the MA60 and a likely customer for the upgraded version. COMAC’s fi rst market forecast, released in November 2010, estimates
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