COMAC: China's Rival to Airbus and Boeing. Should They Be Worried?

For decades, Boeing and Airbus have ruled the skies, supplying—between them—almost every commercial jetliner on Earth. They don’t just sell airplanes; they sell ecosystems: multi-billion-dollar order books, decade-long service and training contracts, export-credit support, and parts depots from Dallas to Doha. Flag carriers, low-cost giants, and leasing firms across every region run on that machine. In short: they’ve been the only show in town.

But now, a third name is starting to make waves: COMAC — China’s state-backed aviation giant. With billions in funding, political backing, and a vast home market hungry for flights, they are out to break the duopoly, with their new jet, the C919, being pitched as a direct rival to the A320 and 737 – sleek and modern, but crucially, cheaper.

It’s already in service domestically. But there’s a problem: the West isn’t buying. And there are reasons for that. From certification hurdles to supply chain concerns, COMAC faces serious headwinds. Yet there’s more to this story than simple engineering woes. Because behind the specs lies a tale of geopolitics, industrial espionage, and a country desperate to dominate the skies…

A Long Hard Road

China’s civil aviation sector wasn’t exactly what you would call quick off the mark – something that is important to understand so that you can appreciate just how far they have come with the C919.

Case in point: the Shanghai Y-10, the nation’s first attempt at making a modern jetliner. It flew in 1980, to much fanfare, but development ended up fizzling out after only three prototypes had been produced. Long story short, it was basically a reverse engineered Boeing 707 – which itself wasn’t exactly cutting edge come 1980 – that ended up costing a fortune, was underpowered, overweight, and horribly fuel inefficient.

Subsequent attempts at cracking the civil aviation nut, quite sensibly, were more modest. The Xi’an Y-7, for example, was a small turboprop transport aircraft based upon the Soviet Antonov An-24, which first flew in 1984, and similarly, there was also the Harbin Y-12, a small utility aircraft, again powered by turboprops, which first flew in 1982 – although it was indigenously designed.

Both commendable efforts to be sure, as after all, how many nations produce aircraft, period, but, nonetheless, objectively, an aviation industry to rival that of the U.S., it was not.

Come the 2000s, however, they started taking small, cautious steps beyond that initial foothold — with the Y-7 being further refined into the MA60. Further still, they also even made a few proper, as in not turboprop powered, airliners of their own, as McDonnell Douglas had allowed them to produce MD-90’s under license – although only two were made before the company’s merger with Boeing saw the scheme terminated.

Again, nothing to be ashamed of for sure, but for Beijing, particularly come the mid noughties, such a state of affairs was simply not good enough. Their nation was on the up, they were increasingly wealthy, their advanced industrial sectors were booming, and they were to be one of the global big boys – therefore, an advanced and world leading aviation sector they just had to have. No ifs. No buts. And no excuses. In fact, with this attitude in mind, the development of large airliners was even made a key national priority in the 2006 ‘Medium-and-Long-Term Science & Tech Plan’ – an economic to-do list that outlined how the nation was to develop over the next 15 years.

As for how they were to do it, that would be with the formation of the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, or COMAC, in 2008. It was to be a state-owned champion that would concentrate the best and brightest aeronautical minds China had all in one place, throw a bugger load of money at them – reportedly 72 billion USD’s worth by 2020 — and let them loose in the pursuit of a single goal: give the People’s Republic an aircraft manufacturer to rival Boeing and Airbus.

China was also in a great place to be doing that back then too. The absolute decimation of poverty and growth of wealth in the nation during the tenure of Deng Xiaoping and onwards was meaning that, increasingly, China was a nation with cash to spend – and Western aerospace firms wanted in.

The price of admission? Build factories, set up joint companies, and transfer tech. Or, in other words: ‘help expand our skilled labour pool and show us how things are done, or our hundreds of millions strong and still growing middle class won’t be flying on your airplanes.’

It was a frankly genius play… and it worked. Airbus, for example, agreed to set up an A320 assembly line in Tianjin in 2008, and companies like Honeywell, Collins, General Electric, and Safran entered partnerships with local firms to supply components for new Chinese made jets.

And so COMAC’s table was set. Unlike the forlorn Y-10 project, COMAC in 2008 had political mandate, ample funding, experienced workers, access to foreign technology, and a massive home market eager to fly…. Now they just had to actually build some jets.

The Prodigal Children

COMAC, as of the time of writing, has two jets that have made it to production, the C909 and the C919.

The former is actually a project that predates COMAC, as development of the ARJ21 Xiangfeng – as it was originally called – actually began back in 2002, with it hitting the prototyping stage in 2008, just before the creation of COMAC, at which point its development was handed over to them, and they saw it through to completion, with it eventually entering commercial service in mid-2016.

How ‘Chinese’ it actually is remains a contentious point though. Most in-country sources insist that it is a properly indigenous design, while many Western analysts are pretty convinced that it is heavily derived from the MD-80. The latter, however, is the more accurate interpretation, because while it was certainly Chinese minds that drafted the final design, and Chinese hands that bolted it all together, we also know that the wings came via Antonov in Ukraine, the engines are General Electric CF34’s from the U.S., and the avionics are supplied by Rockwell Collins, again in the U.S… so yeah…

To be fair to COMAC though, it does seem to be a perfectly competent little jet, with the latest models flying 90(ish) passengers as far as 2,000 nautical miles quite happily. But, despite that, an Embraer E-Jet, ultimately, it is not, as compared to them, the C909 is heavier, has less range, has reliability that is… sub optimal, and a cabin that gets rather toasty in the rear, next to where the engines are mounted – at least on the earlier models.

Perhaps this is why it hasn’t exactly been a sales bonanza for COMAC, because as of the time of writing, it has been in production for just over nine years, and has seen roughly 165–170 units sold; only four of which went to non-Chinese airlines — three to Indonesia-based TransNusa, and one to Lao Airlines, based out of Laos — as the name rather gives away — as well as a further two to Vietnam’s VietJet, which are operated under a wet-lease from Chengdu Airlines.

Don’t mistake the Chinese airlines having received a decent number of them for enthusiasm on their part, either, as most that have been delivered, as well as confirmed orders pending delivery, are for smaller carriers, think Genghis Khan Airlines, Jiangxi Air, and China Express Airlines, rather the big players that are Air China, China Eastern, and China Southern.

But really, the C909 is just a sideshow for COMAC, a stepchild they inherited, and that musters little enthusiasm as a result. Instead, what they really care about is the C919. After all, they weren’t formed to just pump out regional jets, they were formed to take the fight to Airbus and Boeing, by making big, proper, full sized, turbofan powered, serious jets… and that’s exactly what the C919 aspires to be: a narrow-body challenger aimed directly at the Boeing 737 MAX and Airbus A320neo.

Its development began back in 2008 — pretty much the moment that COMAC was founded in fact – with it first flying in 2017, receiving type certification in 2022, and finally entering commercial service in 2023, with China Eastern taking the first unit, and immediately putting it to work on their prestigious Shanghai-Beijing route.

Under the skin, it’s a classic example of Chinese hybrid engineering, with the airframe being COMAC’s, but the guts being mostly Western. The engines, for example, are Franco-American CFM International LEAP-1c’s — the same basic type powering the A320neo and 737 MAX, incidentally. Then there are the avionics and flight control systems, which come from joint ventures with General Electric, Honeywell, both American, and others. Liebherr, German-Swiss, makes the landing gear. Parker Aerospace, American, does the fuel system. By value ultimately, when all is said and done, it’s estimated that around half of the C919’s parts are imported.

Not that that’s a scandal, however, as it’s not like Boeing and Airbus don’t use suppliers that fly different national flags outside their head offices, but for a program that’s always pitched as China’s “breakthrough” in aviation independence, it’s certainly a tad ironic…

Nonetheless, though, the C919 is a big step forward to be sure. It’s certified — in China, they’re still working on it elsewhere — it’s flying, can seat 192 people in all economy high density configuration, can carry them up to 3,000 nautical miles – enough for most Chinese domestic and regional routes — and it offers a roughly comparable experience to the A320ceo or 737NG, i.e., the last generation of those aircraft.

We want to stress that detail about it being on parity with the last generation of those aircraft in particular too, as compared to the newer ones, like an A320neo or a 737-MAX-8, the C919 is a bit heavier, slightly less efficient, and comes with some per-seat operating cost disadvantages.

That last point, as far as potential customers are concerned, is a seriously, majorly, catastrophically bad prospect too. Airlines work on tiny profit margins you see, typical a single digit percentage, so to them, the prospect of an aircraft which is a smidge less efficient, and the like, could well represent a choice between profitability, and bankruptcy.

COMAC, not lacking for grey matter as they are, however, have thought of a clever solution to increase its market viability: a lower sticker price, with the C919 reportedly selling for 101 million USD, at least when it launched in 2022. For comparison, when LATAM Airlines out of Chile slapped down 1.8 billion USD for 17 A321neos in that same year, they paid 105.9 million USD per unit, and when Delta in the US did so for 100 737-MAX-10’s, also in 2022, they paid 13.5 billion, or 135 million per unit.

Annoyingly, because individual negotiation plays such a big part in deciding final sticker price, there isn’t an easy, straight comparison we can make, but by breaking the numbers like those, which we do have, it does appear that, yes, COMAC’s claims of undercutting the competition are indeed true.

It’s a strategy that seems to be working as well, as that pricing has seen them land 1,183 orders from Chinese airlines, and that, no matter how you cut it, is a bloody big number – although, as of the time of writing, only 19 of that number, and indeed in total, have actually been delivered, all of them gobbled up by the big three airlines we mentioned earlier.

As for foreign orders, currently, they have a grand total of 22 — 20 from AerCap, an Irish-American aircraft leasing company, and 2 from Lao Airlines. And 22, no matter how you cut it, is a much smaller number than 1,183.

So, what gives? Why have the Chinese airlines leapt upon it with such enthusiasm, only for their foreign equivalents to be put off it so despite the price difference? And indeed, will they ever turn to it with such enthusiasm?

A big question to be sure, and because big questions have big answers, we should probably draw a line here, and devote a whole chapter to answering that question…

Going Global?

Let’s start with the most immediate and immovable roadblock: certification.

As of the time of writing, the C919 is only certified by the Civil Aviation Administration of China, CAAC. That’s perfectly fine for domestic use — and Hong Kong as of the 1st of January 2025 — but if you’re an airline that wants to fly into the European Union or the U.S., i.e. the highest value markets in the world, you need type certification from their equivalents of the CAAC, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, EASA, and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, FAA, as examples. Without such validation, EU/U.S. airlines can not operate it in their home markets; foreign carriers can only enter under third-country approvals — which is very limited in practice.

Negotiations with EASA are ongoing. There have been joint meetings and technical exchanges, and EASA has said publicly it’s willing to work with China on certifying the aircraft. But that is a multi-year process even in the best-case scenario, and in April 2025, EASA Executive Director Florian Guillermet said European validation of the C919 would take three to six years.

FAA certification, meanwhile, is… let’s call it aspirational. COMAC isn’t currently pursuing FAA validation; and given U.S.–China relations, and the recent export-license whiplash — Washington weighed blocking LEAP-1C exports in 2020, then suspended some export licenses affecting COMAC in late May 2025, before allowing GE’s engine shipments to resume on July 3, 2025 — no one seems to expect an FAA green light any time soon.

And even if they did move to give it the green light, it wouldn’t be fast. The FAA notes new type certifications typically take 5–9 years, with steps that include establishing the certification basis, detailed planning and standards, compliance testing and analysis, and then, if you’ve jumped through all of those hoops, an issuance of a type certificate. For context: the 737 MAX 8 took about five years from application to FAA certification, and the A350-900 logged over 2,600 flight-test hours on its way to approval.

Then there’s the issue of support.

To explain, have you ever bought a car from a new to the market brand – think like Yugo back in the day — only for said brand to disappear, and leave you absolutely buggered when you needed a replacement part? Or, just found that the nascent brand in question has terribly scaled its operation, and just cannot keep the supply of spare parts flowing even when it is still in business? Any of our European viewers who rock a Dacia will know exactly what we mean.

Well, those kind of scenarios are exactly what get airlines worried when assessing the C919. They wonder how long will it be supported? How reliable will the supply chain be? Will COMAC be able to get spare parts to the other side of the world at short notice? What happens if they need tech support mid-flight in Dubai or Dallas, do COMAC have everything in place to handle that? Don’t forget the razor thin margins that airlines operate on, these are important questions – they need their planes up in the sky, carrying passengers, earning them money.

And both Airbus and Boeing, through decades of experience now, have proven that they (usually) have this covered: they have the vast deeply embedded global support networks, the hangars, the training schools, the parts depots, the maintenance crews, and the digital support that their customers use every day.

Yes, COMAC are expanding. Yes, they plan to roll out more international infrastructure. But that takes time – and the C919, remember, has barely left the runway.

Put it this way: If you were the CEO of a major airline, with your own plush livelihood on the line, as well as the slightly less plush livelihoods of thousands of staff under you, would you take a risk on this new-fangled COMAC jet, when sure, on paper, it could increase your profit margins, but there is oh so many unprovens and unknowns about it? Odds are, you wouldn’t, would you?

Then there’s reliability to consider, or a potential lack thereof.

In some regards, it’s unfair to put this one on the C919, as it really hasn’t had the time to prove itself either way. But that’s the problem, it isn’t aviation enthusiasts, eager to see a greater diversity in the sky, who buy these jets, it’s suit and tied sorts in the top of skyscrapers who buy them, who only care about keeping their company profitable – and if they make a bad judgement call, if they invest in a fleet of C919’s and they turn out to be absolute heaps of junk, there’s no two ways about it, their company, in all likelihood, is absolutely f*cked – and again, would you take that risk?

Until there’s a large pool of C919s flying daily in different environments, it’s impossible to build the kind of safety and reliability profile that airlines crave.

Next, there’s branding and public perception to consider.

Ask a random flyer in Europe or the U.S. what aircraft they’re on, and there’s a 60% chance – yes there’s data for that – that they don’t know. But one thing they do know, they hope it’s not one of those bloody Boeing Maxi Pad things. You seen the news? Fall out the sky they do. Dangerous. Lethal. In fact, you’ve surely heard this particular phrase thrown about of late, “If it’s Boeing, I ain’t going.”

Optics, ultimately, matter. And if you’re watching this channel – great taste by the way – odds are you are aware that the Chinese are capable of truly world leading manufacturing, or p*ss poor manufacturing, with it all hinging on how much you pay them. You want 25 million kazoos pumped out the factory for pennies by yesterday because they’re trendy, for some reason – say no more, the People’s Republic has got you covered.

And on the inverse, you want a space station, or some kind of cutting edge pharmaceutical? Somewhere out there is someone on the other end of a +86 phone number who can sort you out… if you’ve got the cash.

The average man and woman on the street, however, has been slower in getting the message. How often have you heard someone flatly write off all Chinese cars, because they’re “made in China,” or choose an iPhone, because – very ironically admittedly if you know where iPhone’s are made – they don’t want something ‘poor quality’ that’s “made in China.”

Ultimately, if you are a CEO chiefly concerned with profits, by buying from the established brands, you are just completely cutting the risk of such consumer kick back and corresponding negative headlines out altogether.

And with that, we arrive at the question. Will the C919 ever break out of its current domestic niche and find true international success – rather than be stuck with the paltry handful of orders its currently getting?

If you ask us, yes, it’s almost certainly going to happen, at least to a modest degree. China has ever more nations friendly to it, and even if the US and Europe remain unconvinced, that’s a lot of potential friends who might not mind saving a few quid on some jets. Take North Korea as the most extreme example, when the Tupolev Tu-204’s currently serving Air Koryo’s international routes age out – they suddenly don’t have to go to the Russians to replace them. For similar reasons, Iran and Cuba could both also be prime customers.

We don’t even have to look at nations firmly on Uncle Sam’s naughty list to find potential customers either, Pakistan, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Brazil, to name just four – are all countries with ever closer ties to China.

Also, frankly, don’t rule out Ryanair. It’s unclear just how much CEO Michael O’Leary actually has interest in the C919, versus is just saying he does to squeeze Boeing for a better deal, but he is a man with a proven track record for absolute fanaticism for driving operating costs down… so if you were to put a gun to our heads and forced us to bet which major Western airline might be the first to take the plunge, we know where we’d be putting our money.

Of course, that hinges on it getting EASA certification, but then again, that should be said about all this speculation. If it doesn’t get the necessary certification, it won’t be flying anywhere – all the other reasons to not choose it be damned.

The Future

And while we’re discussing the future, this is the perfect point to step away from the C919 specifically, and start thinking about COMAC’s future more broadly, because they are not resting on their laurels. Instead, they have a grand long-term vision for the future — a future in which the C909 will be remembered as a mere set of training wheels, and the C919 will be remembered as just the first of many jets that earned them a full parity with Airbus and Boeing.

At the heart of that push is the C929. Initiated back in 2016 as a China-Russia joint venture under the CRAIC — China-Russia Commercial Aircraft International Corporation — banner, the C929 was meant to seat 250–300 passengers and fly up to 6,500 nautical miles. China would build the widebody fuselage, Russia would design the wings, and Western suppliers were expected to provide engines and avionics.

But then, geopolitics intervened. First, it was China and Russia clashing over workshare and ultimate control of the program. Then, it was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which made Western suppliers – vital for the whole project — scatter. As a result, by 2023, China had ceased all co-operation, and was now going it alone.

Progress, however, has been slow, and as of 2024, the C929 remains only in the design phase. Mockups show a twin-aisle aircraft reminiscent of the 787 or A330, and capacity is now quoted at being 250–280 seats in a ‘standard’ configuration, potentially scaling up to as many as 440 in a high-density all economy configuration.

COMAC remains confident though, and says suppliers will start delivering major components by 2027, aiming for a flying prototype in 2028 or 2029. More realistically, most believe that the first flight will come in the early 2030s, with entry into service sometime mid-decade – assuming that there are no major delays.

And hold that thought, because courtesy of their engines – or more rather a lack of them – there just may be such a delay on the cards. You see, widebodies need massive high-thrust turbofans – the sort produced by General Electric’s GE90, and remember when we said the US had banned export of the LEAP engine to China, and then unblocked it? Well, the GE90 was affected by that ban too. And in such an environment, who is to say if they’ll be able to get their hands on the engines needed to complete development within their original time frame.

They are working on their own equivalent engine in the meantime, the CJ-2000, so all may still be well — but most still believe it is years away from commercial readiness, so it is not being proactively considered for inclusion in the C929 – but rather is an as and when, don’t count on it kind of deal.

Then there’s the C939. Not too much to say about this one; it’s going to be a 777 slash A350 kind of equivalent, and… that’s about all we know about its design, at least if we want to be certain – even Chinese language sources are all over the place for this one. But they are all at least clear that it’s going to be bigger than the C929.

Such a situation makes sense however, because this one is very much in the nascent stage of its development, with early feasibility studies having been undertaken back in 2011, the odd leaked preliminary sketch finding its way to the media for the next decade or so, and then development proper beginning only in January 2025, at least according to Sina and Guangcha news.

So yeah, probably going to be a while before you see this one, although we see no reason not to treat it as a matter of when, rather than if.

Not that we can say the same about what COMAC is eyeing up to come after that: the C949 – a supersonic airliner. It was only announced in February 2025, so it’s still very much in its preliminary stages, but COMAC did release their target specifications: a top speed of Mach 1.6, so a smidge over 1,200mph at sea level, a range of just under 7,000 miles, and a sonic boom quiet enough to facilitate actually flying over land without ruining the lives of everyone who lives on the ground underneath. It’ll also be small, as supersonic airliners do tend to be, with space for 100 passengers or so.

Will we ever see it? Lord only knows on this one, it’s so early in its development, and with such lofty goals, that we wouldn’t even want to comment. However, it isn’t like China doesn’t have quite the well proven track record for surprising us all with just what it can accomplish when it sets its mind to it… so maybe we’ll come back in to check on the C949 around 2040 or so!

Conclusion

Ultimately, COMAC’s future is still unwritten.

The C919’s domestic rollout is a promising start, but it hasn’t yet cracked the code to international success. The jet itself is decent, the price is aggressive, and the ambition is sky-high, but real challenges remain — technical, regulatory, and reputational.

But, saying that, history also shows that when China decides to compete, it doesn’t do half-measures. For example, remember when their cars used to look like cheap knock-offs, and then they started to look competitive, and then genuinely impressive, and then you started seeing them out and about on your own local roads?

Yeah, for that reason alone, and countless other examples we could point to, we certainly aren’t going to be surprised if COMAC ends up jumping all of those hurdles, and makes that long established duopoly a triopoly…

Key Takeaways

• COMAC’s C919 aims to challenge Airbus and Boeing with a cheaper, modern jet.
• The C919 faces significant hurdles, including certification and supply chain concerns.
• China’s aviation industry has progressed significantly, but faces reputational challenges.
• COMAC’s future plans include larger aircraft and even a supersonic airliner.
• Historical examples suggest China’s determination to compete in global aviation.

Sources

• Original MegaProjects video: COMAC: China’s Rival to Airbus and Boeing. Should They Be Worried?
• Hero image source by SammyJewel / openverse, by.

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