Bye, Bye Boeing: Here Comes China’s Comac

It looks like the biennial Singapore Air Show but it sounds like another nail being driven into Boeing's coffin.

Communist China's state-owned planemaker, Comac, debuted its C919 commercial airliner in Singapore on Wednesday, "upstaging industry leaders Airbus and Boeing," according to Reuters.

If you're looking for a much less biased source, U.S.-based Aviation Week came away similarly impressed.

On this week's Check Six podcast, Aviation Week executive editor Jens Flottau said the C919 (he got to see it inside and out) "felt like a 21st Century airliner — very impressive." Editor-in-chief Joe Anselmo said the air show "was almost flipped this time," with Comac's presence for the first time far outshining both Boeing and Airbus.

The Singapore Air Show was the C919's first appearance outside of China — and various foreign airlines showed interest even though the plane has yet to be certified outside of China.

Comac is dependent on foreign suppliers for certain critical components, including the engines, but the company is investing billions domestically to change that. Ewen McDonald, from Rolls-Royce's aircraft engine division, told Reuters that Comac is further behind on engines but thinks "they're further advanced as far as airframes."

Foreign orders will start soon and foreign deliveries in the next few years.

Here's what I wrote about Boeing's troubles earlier this month:

"[Boeing's] future," Aboulafia concluded, "if it can be called that, is simply to run the company for cash—deliver legacy jets, try to make existing defense programs profitable, and resume converting cash flow into shareholder returns."
The company's strategy is: "Airbus can't produce enough airliners for everybody."
And when China gets into the industry in a big way? [crickets]

Can I call 'em sometimes, or what?

Maybe it will take longer than Boeing hopes for the Comac C919 to gain widespread acceptance. But now that Boeing has consigned itself to Airbus's crumbs, it's a matter of when not if Comac squeezes Boeing from the bottom just as hard as Airbus does from the top.

As much as it pains me to write this, Comac won't come with any of Boeing's recent baggage.

Worse, the C919 is stolen property. The airliner "wasn't just built with home-grown spunk and gumption," ExtremeTech reported in 2019, and "includes an awful lot of technology China allegedly stole from the same companies it hired to build the plane." That report is based on an investigation by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and also indictments from the Trump-era Department of Justice.

The original idea behind opening trade with China was that US and Chinese customers would both benefit. This has been true in many ways, but there's a profound difference between manufacturing low-cost consumer goods and building high-performance aircraft parts with huge R&D costs. Such components are the end product of decades of research and manufacturing expertise. Far from competing on a level playing field, China appears to be focused on stealing the information it needs to close the gap with US companies, then limiting their access to its own market once it's finished taking what it wants.

While that's all true — and damning of 40 years of Chinese trade relations — it means nothing to airliners who need new airplanes but who no longer trust Boeing the way they once did. It also does nothing to restore Boeing's lost resolve.

This country needs a domestic airliner manufacturer just as much as we need a competitive rival to Lockheed Martin. But any kind of government assistance to Boeing might prove as useful as transfusing blood into a decaying corpse.

What's a superpower to do when its government won't protect its vital industrial base... and neither will its vital industrial base?