Russian-Chinese plane. Third place for two

03.11.2020

The family of the Russian-Chinese wide-body long-range aircraft was officially named CR929. The naming ceremony took place on September 29 at the SOMA headquarters in Shanghai. Latin letters C and R indicate participants: C - China, R - Russia. CR is also the first two letters of the name of the Russian-Chinese enterprise China-Russia Commercial Aircraft International Corporation (CRAIC), which is the operator of the new aircraft program.

PJSC United Aircraft Corporation and the Civil Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) solemnly named the new generation wide-body long-range aircraft and also presented the airliner’s livery.

The first flight of the head prototype of the ShFDMS is scheduled for 2021, and the start of serial deliveries of the ShFDMS is expected in 2025–2027.

A memorandum on the joint creation of the ShFDMS was signed by the Russian and Chinese sides in April 2014. Documents on the program to create a new wide-body long-range aircraft passenger plane were signed on June 25, 2016 during the official visit of the President Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to China, including an agreement on the creation on a part-time basis of a joint venture necessary for the implementation of the program, which will be registered at the headquarters of COMAS in the free trade zone in the Pudong district of Shanghai.

The first flight of the head prototype of the ShFDMS is planned for 2021, and the start of serial deliveries of the ShFDMS is expected in 2025–2027, depending on the expected number of new technological solutions selected during the development. A joint engineering center will be organized in Russia to design the aircraft. and the serial production itself will have to be carried out at the SOMAS plant in Pudong (built for the production of the promising Chinese medium-range aircraft C919).

The parties also presented the CRAIC joint venture logo used in the airliner’s livery. It consists of two equal wings that move evenly from left to right. The colors of the wings symbolize the project participants: red - China, blue - Russia.

At the ceremony, the Russian side was represented by Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation Oleg Bocharov and President of PJSC UAC Yuri Slyusar. China was represented by Deputy Minister of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China Xin Guobin and Chairman of the Board of Directors of COMAC He Dongfeng. The event was also attended by Guo Bozhi, President of the China-Russia Commercial Aircraft International Corporation (CRAIC) joint venture. ⠀

Commenting on the choice of the main figures for the future airliner, Yuri Slyusar explained:

"In Chinese culture, the number 9 means eternity. We strategically use name and numbering to jointly build the concept of a unified offer of civil aircraft. Thus, the CR 929 family reflects the opportunity to create an offer for airlines together with the Chinese narrow-body project C 919, and the numbering of each member of the family continues the line of offers UAC commercial aircraft, from MS-21-200/300/400 to CR 929 - 500/600/700".

Another quote: “Global demand for wide-body aircraft in the period 2023-2041 may amount to at least 8,200 aircraft.”⠀⠀⠀

COMAC Chairman of the Board of Directors He Dongfeng said: "The next 20 years will be a strategically important period in the development of global civil aviation industry. We will make every effort to make CR 929 an example of successful cooperation between Russia and China in the modern world."
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The basic version of the wide-body long-haul aircraft will be designated CR929-600, the junior version will be CR929-500, and the senior version will be CR929-700.

Engines

The aircraft's parameters are not fully known. It was planned that the aircraft would be equipped with PD-35 engines, but at the first stage it is planned to install the British Rolls Royce or the American General Electric.

In September of this year, UAC signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Chinese engine company AECC on the joint development of a gas turbine engine.

Joint work on a promising aircraft engine in the global aircraft industry is exceptional. Not all countries make engines and they try not to share technologies. It is expected that the Russian-Chinese engine will have a thrust of at least 35 tons, and when scientific and technical capabilities are implemented in it, it will become one of the most modern.

The cost of developing the aircraft will be $13 billion, financing will be carried out on a parity basis. As previously reported, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation sent an application to the government to finance the development of the aircraft in the amount of 3.9 billion rubles in 2018.

It is expected that the first firm contract for the CR 929 could be awarded as early as 2019. If the project can be implemented according to plan, it will be a real breakthrough in the civil aircraft industry and strongest blow under the monopoly of Airbus and Boeing, which today control the entire world market of long-range wide-body aircraft.
The CR 929 is said to be 15 percent more efficient than the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus 350. The aircraft's design will incorporate the latest advances in aerodynamics and composite materials.

Russia and China will bear the costs of designing and building the aircraft equally. Experts believe that global demand for wide-body aircraft in the period 2023-2041 will be at least 8,200 units. The largest market will be China with a requirement of at least 1,500 aircraft. And for Russia, given the size of our country, the CR 929 will be very useful.

The implementation of the wide-body long-haul aircraft program is on schedule, stated the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov in an official statement.
“The concept of the family has been developed, the characteristics of the aircraft have been determined. The immediate plans are to move the program to preliminary design and the stage of requesting proposals from suppliers of systems and equipment,” the minister listed.

“The aircraft being created immediately fits into the global context for a full presence on the world market. At the same time, we are creating a single project, forming a single positioning of the new aircraft with our Chinese colleagues,” explained Denis Manturov.

Back in the spring of 2014, during a visit to the capital of the People's Republic of China by Russian President V.V. Putin signed a memorandum on joint work on the creation of a wide-body long-range aircraft (SHFDMS). Its implementation was entrusted from the Russian side to the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), and from the Chinese side to the state-owned company SOMAS (Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China).
Two years later, in the Chinese city of Zhuhai, in November, at the international salon China Airshow-2016, a model of the Russian-Chinese airliner was shown to the general public.

After the governments of the two countries signed an agreement on the joint implementation of the ShFDMS program, the company China-Russia Commercial Aircraft International Corp.Ltd was created. The large Chinese metropolis of Shanghai was chosen as the head office and headquarters of the joint company, and Guo Bozhi, who served as head of the wide-body aircraft department at COMAS, was appointed its president. On the Russian side, a seat on the board of directors of the China-Russia company will be taken by S. Fomin, who led the team at UAC developing programs for aircraft with a wide fuselage.

For countries, the roles in creating the ShFDMS were distributed as follows: the Chinese COMAS is responsible for the development and production of a composite-metal fuselage, and the Russian UAC will develop and organize the production of a composite wing. The Shanghai plant will handle final assembly of the airframe.

The first series of ShFMDS will be equipped with engines from Western companies Rolls-Royce or General Electric. In July 2016, the Russian and Chinese sides assembled a team to jointly develop a 35 thp engine. In Russia, the PD-35 project was started earlier, taking as a basis the developments on the PD-14 engine for the airliner.

In March 2017, the joint venture Sino-Russian International Commercial Company took over the tasks of development, production and sales with subsequent maintenance of the ShFDMS. As of April 6, 2017, the Russian side completed the second stage of the ShFDMS project, the following important work was completed: with clarification of the data required for wide-body aircraft, a 3D model of the theoretical contours of the aircraft was developed and a model of the DMS wing was made, the calculated data of all characteristics of the airliner were optimized, and others technical calculations and requirements.

The price of the entire project is $117.5 million, the first serial deliveries are planned for 2027, the ShFDMS will take off no later than 2022. This aircraft will be 20% cheaper than its competitors in the first year and we hope it will create healthy competition for Boieng and Airbus, which dominate in this segment.

Yesterday, July 23, the MAKS-2017 aerospace salon ended; his main guest, as always, was Vladimir Putin. He looked at the fifth-generation fighter T-50, listened about the MC-21 medium-range passenger aircraft, and even looked at the Boeing stand. It seemed that attention would also be paid to the joint Russian-Chinese aircraft. Of course, there is no plane. But over the past year, so many events have happened within the framework of this project (including with Putin’s participation) that it would be strange to ignore it. Nevertheless, at MAKS, information about the large aircraft that Russia and China should build together appeared only sporadically. The impressively sized model of the aircraft made by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) did not make it to Zhukovsky near Moscow.

The model was first shown at Airshow China in November 2016 - it was, one might say, a premiere. For the sake of this event, Industry Minister Denis Manturov and President of the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) Yuri Slyusar flew to Zhuhai for one day. Together with their Chinese colleagues, under the gunpoint of many cameras, they solemnly pulled the red material from the model.

COMAC also came to the Paris Airshow 2017 with the model, which already marked the international presentation of the project. The model stood at the stand of the Chinese aircraft manufacturer, where in the background there were footage from the meetings between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

A separate intrigue is the name of the aircraft. In the Russian version it is simply a “wide-body long-range aircraft” (SHFDMS). In Chinese - C929 (or C9X9), that is, the next in the line after the recently taken off C919.

In Le Bourget, the aircraft mock-up, however, was designed as LRWBCA (Long-Range Wide-Body Civil Aircraft; translated into Russian the same SHFDMS). The unpronounceable abbreviation, both in Russian and in English, raises the question: when will the aircraft have a sonorous official name? Slyusar says they haven’t thought about it yet: “The plane doesn’t have a name, and we’re not stressing about this yet. If you have any fantasies [by title], I will be grateful to you. The Chinese, being fairly consistent people, have certain approaches to naming their aircraft. We treat them with respect."

At MAKS, let me remind you, there was no mock-up. COMAC did not participate in the Moscow Air Show, which means their mock-up did not appear. UAC hasn't made its own yet.

Taking off on politics

Negotiations on the joint construction of the country's aircraft have been going on for almost ten years. In 2009, Alexey Fedorov (then president of the UAC) predicted that a third player in the global aviation industry would emerge precisely “as a result of joint projects between Russia and China.” True, he admitted that everything is very difficult: “For a single country, the creation big plane can be an extremely difficult task. But I can say what the main difficulty [of the negotiations] is: both Russia and China want to be the leader of the project. Although the optimal option is to share the risks 50/50.”

The project had the status of “consultations in progress” for several years. Simply put, no one really dealt with it - the UAC, and Russia as a whole, then pinned more hopes on the West than on the East (see the epic about the promotion of the Sukhoi Superjet 100). China probably also had no time for a large aircraft: the country, without a strong engineering background, hastily gained competencies in the aviation industry - in particular, it launched a program regional jet ARJ21.

At meetings with Chinese leaders, Putin has repeatedly stated the need to join efforts to create a wide-body aircraft “to take its rightful place in world markets.” In 2011, in a conversation with Chinese President Hu Jintao, he noted that more and more American and European aircraft were being purchased, while “countries such as Russia and China are able and should have their own production.”

Context

Moscow has set the starting price for shares of the Irkut aircraft corporation at $500 million

Financial Times 10/22/2003

The Russian version of the survival of the Ukrainian aircraft industry

Mirror of the Week 07/16/2008

MS-21 - an alternative to Airbus and Boeing?

Les Echos 06/10/2016
In 2012, Xi Jinping came to power in China. The topic of a large aircraft did not disappear from the agenda of meetings of heads of state, but there was no increase in movement in the project.

The process accelerated noticeably in 2014, under the influence of both internal and external circumstances. In both countries, large state-owned aircraft industrial conglomerates were finally formed; Europe and the United States imposed sanctions against Russia, and Xi Jinping, during a visit to the COMAC plant, expressed regret that the lack of its own aircraft makes China dependent on foreign aircraft manufacturers. In May 2014, when Putin was in China, UAC and COMAC signed a memorandum of cooperation. In June 2016, again during Putin’s visit to Beijing, the countries reached an intergovernmental agreement. At the same time, clarity appeared on the creation of a joint venture (JV): there is no leader in the project, everything is divided equally.

And at the end of 2016, Putin told reporters that part of Rosneftegaz’s dividends would be used to create a powerful aircraft engine (35 tons of thrust), which “will allow us, together with our Chinese friends, to create a wide-body long-range aircraft” (a separate story needs to be written about engines, given that China intends to build its own engine). Rosneftegaz is 100% owned by the state, owns a controlling stake in Rosneft, shares in Gazprom and Inter RAO. According to Putin, Rosneftegaz is another government budget. This is also the source of financing for the regional Il-114 and wide-body Il-96-400 projects, which Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin is actively lobbying for.

By the way, the return to the Il-96-400 is explained by the preservation of competencies specifically for the Russian-Chinese aircraft. This argument, however, arose quite recently - consider it retroactively (that is, this could not be the motive). And one more thing: at the beginning of the negotiations, Russia proposed to build a wide-body aircraft based on the Il-96, but the Chinese refused, insisting on building it from scratch.

Judging by the way Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are taking care of the plane, this is a political project. Russia and China have big ambitions: they want to be in the small top league of states with their own civil aviation industry on a par with the United States and Europe. For the sake of these ambitions, countries are even ready to unite, because alone they cannot defeat either Airbus or Boeing.

General but Chinese

At the beginning of 2017, UAC and COMAC established the China-Russia Aircraft International Commercial Corporation (CRAIC). “But craic in English means ‘revelry’. Not a bad name for a joint project!” - evil tongues joke. The project participants, however, are serious - they opened an office, appointed management, distributed the work. They are trying to maintain the given line, when everything is 50/50. The office is located in Shanghai, closer to the final assembly line - the COMAC plant. In Moscow an engineering center will be opened. A COMAC manager has been appointed as the general director of the joint venture, and a UAC manager has been appointed as the chairman of the board of directors. There are eight people on the board of directors, four from each side.

“According to the division of work, which relates exclusively to the airframe, we agreed that the wing, center section, tail unit- this is production in Russia. The fuselage itself and the final assembly are from Shanghai. There is a colossal plant there, well equipped, which, in our opinion, allows us to carry out the third project [along with the assembly of ARJ21 and C919],” Slyusar said in Le Bourget. The location chosen for assembly is due to its proximity to target markets. And Slyusar calls fears that the plane will eventually become Chinese unfounded: “We will be able to penetrate the market, which sells ten times more aircraft than the Russian one, and we will have guaranteed demand for many years to come, if only on the Chinese market. Such opportunities are few and far between for any manufacturer, and they should be treasured.”

Slyusar does not undertake to evaluate the contribution of each side: “We proceed from ideology; Despite the fact that this is a project of two companies and even two countries, only one team can create the aircraft. It’s impossible for two teams to have one plane.” Slyusar also speaks somewhat philosophically about financing the aircraft: “This is a capital-intensive project, of course. You have to imagine that an airplane takes 8 to 12 years to develop, then it takes about 30-40 years to be produced and flies for another 40-50 years. A story about a new plane for centuries, for centuries. And here any calculations are quite conditional, both from the point of view of forecasting and the effects that you get.” According to preliminary calculations, the project requires 13-20 billion dollars.

Construction of the aircraft should begin with the basic version: capacity of 280 seats, range of 12 thousand km. Completion of the preliminary design and its protection is planned for the end of 2018. The first firm contract is expected in 2019, the first flight in 2023, the start of deliveries in 2026, this was stated in the feasibility study of the project, which was prepared by UAC.

In Russian pro-state media (and in Chinese, too, they say) the yet-to-be-existent plane was dubbed the “killer” of Airbus and Boeing. There was only confusion about what types of aircraft were to be “killed.” Based on Slyusar’s statements, these are A350 and B787. If you listen to COMAC top manager Guo Bozhi, then A330 and B777.

All listed aircraft belong to the category of long-range wide-body aircraft. But there is a fundamental difference: the A350 and B787 are new products in the global aviation industry, more than 50% made of composite materials (which implies a slightly different production cycle). The A330 and B777 are so-called previous generation aircraft, with the predominant use of aluminum. In general, it is premature to talk about competition: the Russian-Chinese aircraft will enter service in ten years (as stated in the feasibility study); Airbus and Boeing are unlikely to sit idle all this time.

But long before entering the market, the project may encounter big amount pitfalls. And it is unknown which ones he can bypass and which ones he cannot. The most obvious risks are: Political - the project is very long in time, what will happen to it when the leaders of countries change? Economic - the only source of financing is the budget; both Russia and China are not experiencing the most better times in the economy, and the forecasts are not encouraging. Corporate - just remember how difficult it is for Germany and France to get along at Airbus; and these are countries with a common culture. Finally, mental ones - language barriers, differences in behavior patterns and other seemingly little things that can complicate the process, even to the point of stopping it.

InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.

PJSC United Aircraft Corporation and the Civil Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) solemnly named the new generation wide-body long-range aircraft and also presented the airliner’s livery.

The first flight of the head prototype of the ShFDMS is planned for 2021, and the start of serial deliveries of the ShFDMS is expected in 2025-2027.

A memorandum on the joint creation of the ShFDMS was signed by the Russian and Chinese sides in April 2014. Documents on the program to create a new wide-body long-haul passenger aircraft were signed on June 25, 2016 as part of the official visit of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to China, including an agreement on the creation on a part-time basis of a joint venture necessary for the implementation of the program, which will be registered at the headquarters SOMAS apartment in the free trade zone in Pudong district of Shanghai.

The first flight of the head prototype of the ShFDMS is planned for 2021, and the start of serial deliveries of the ShFDMS is expected in 2025-2027, depending on the expected number of new technological solutions selected during the development. A joint engineering center will be organized in Russia to design the aircraft. and the serial production itself will have to be carried out at the SOMAS plant in Pudong (built for the production of the promising Chinese medium-range aircraft C919).

Commenting on the choice of the main figures for the future airliner, Yuri Slyusar explained:

Another quote: “Global demand for wide-body aircraft in the period 2023-2041 may amount to at least 8,200 aircraft.”⠀⠀⠀

COMAC Chairman of the Board of Directors He Dongfeng said: “The next 20 years will be a strategically important period in the development of the global civil aviation industry. We will make every effort to make the CR 929 an example of successful cooperation between Russia and China in the modern world.”
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The basic version of the wide-body long-haul aircraft will be designated CR929-600, the junior version will be CR929-500, and the senior version will be CR929-700.

Engines

In September of this year, UAC signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Chinese engine company AECC on the joint development of a gas turbine engine.

It is expected that the first firm contract for the CR 929 could be awarded as early as 2019. If the project can be implemented as planned, it will be a real breakthrough in the civil aircraft industry and a strong blow to the monopoly of Airbus and Boeing, which today controls the entire global market for long-haul wide-body aircraft.
The CR 929 is said to be 15 percent more efficient than the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus 350. The aircraft's design will incorporate the latest advances in aerodynamics and composite materials.

Full report on

By 2025, a new Russian-Chinese passenger aircraft for long-distance transportation will appear in Russia. The memorandum was signed by the parties in April 2014, but only in November of this year was it possible to complete a feasibility study and “shake hands.” At the international air show in China, China Airshow 2016, in early November, a model of the future wide-body long-range aircraft was demonstrated. passenger aircraft(SHFDMS).

Russian-Chinese passenger plane. Photo: United Aircraft Corporation

The authors of the project were the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) of Russia and the aircraft manufacturing corporation of China - COMAC. Partners from the Middle Kingdom christened the aircraft C929, while the Russian side has so far limited itself to the abbreviation SHFDMS. The launch of the first aircraft is scheduled for 2025. The joint project will make it possible to replace foreign airliners with domestic ones and displace two key Western manufacturers in the world market - Boeing and Airbus. Today, these two companies produce almost all wide-body aircraft of this class.

According to its characteristics, the aircraft is on the border between the small (200-300 seats) and medium (300-400) capacity classes. The approximate number of seats is 280, flight range is up to 12 thousand kilometers. The mid-capacity segment is the most in demand in the world. For example, of all orders from Boeing and Airbus, half are for wide-body, medium-capacity aircraft with 300-400 seats. The announced characteristics of the capacity and range of the future aircraft indicate that the Russian and Chinese parties have reached an agreement, since back in the summer the corporations were unable to come to a common denominator on the market niche of the future brainchild. The point is “what is good for the Russian is death for the Chinese.”

In Russia, almost all airliners are designed for medium-range routes of 2.5-6 thousand km with low passenger traffic of up to 300 seats. China, on the contrary, needs a long-haul aircraft with a large capacity of 400-450 seats. In China, the flow of passengers flying to Europe and the countries of the Asia-Pacific region (APR) is constantly growing. The range of these flights exceeds 7 thousand kilometers. According to forecasts of the International Association air transport(IATA), in 20 years, China will double the number of flights, overtake the United States and become the main market for passenger transportation. By the time the C929 is released in 2025, the Chinese will have another 10 years to build a large fleet to accommodate the planned growth in passenger traffic. As we can see, the range characteristics are “tailored” for foreign flights of Chinese airlines carrying passengers over distances of 7-10 thousand km to Europe, the USA, Australia, and the African continent. It is clear that Chinese manufacturers are seeing an increase in overseas flights for their citizens. For Russia, on the contrary, the middle class capacity for 300 people, including foreign transportation, is important.

The developed characteristics can be called mutually beneficial, but to a lesser extent for Russia if the aircraft is used on domestic flights. The costs of operating a long-haul aircraft may not be profitable at medium ranges, which means that airlines will purchase them exclusively for flights to the USA, Japan, India and Thailand. In any case, Russia needs a wide-body aircraft. Including for export. However, according to analysts, one should not count on large demand following the example of Western manufacturers, whose orders do not exceed 250 aircraft in this range class. However, these indicators will change in the coming decades by Chinese companies. According to forecasts, China's airlines will purchase about 6 thousand aircraft, of which at least 1.5 thousand will be wide-body aircraft. Since the project is a joint one, Russia will also benefit from the supplies.

The development of a new aircraft family can make the project beneficial for all parties. An agreement was reached on this in advance, and the current version will be the basic one. The corporations did not specify what parameters the changes would affect, but it is obvious that the capacity will vary. Range variations are more complex because they affect engine characteristics. Today it is known that the Russian side is developing the PD-35 engine for the future aircraft. It belongs to the high-thrust category and is designed for long-haul aircraft. But the first aircraft of the C929 project will be equipped with two Western General Electric or Rolls-Royce engines in the 35-ton thrust class. The most technically difficult to produce elements of the aircraft will be taken care of by the Russian side. This is the creation of a composite wing, mechanization of the entire aircraft, and avionics. Only Ilyushin has experience in creating a long-range wide-body class vehicle. The group of developers and manufacturers also includes the design bureaus of the Tupolev and Civil aircraft Sukhoi." The Chinese company will get the work on the fuselage. The production itself will be taken over by an aircraft plant in the suburbs of Shanghai, where the medium-range Chinese aircraft C919 is already being built. The joint project will be coordinated in the Pudong free trade zone near Shanghai. Its total cost is estimated at $15-20 billion , which are equally invested by Russia and China.

In the meantime, the Russian government has decided to create a transitional model of a long-range aircraft until its appearance in 2025-2027. Russian-Chinese airliner. According to Dmitry Rogozin, the production of the Il-96-400 will make it possible to abandon the purchase of Western aircraft, which have risen sharply in price due to exchange rate differences. This aircraft is a deep modernization of the Il-96-300 and will have a flight range of up to 12 thousand kilometers. The Ministry of Industry and Trade is allocating 50 billion rubles for the “transitional” project. The airliner will be equipped with modern avionics and the length of the fuselage will be increased. The first test flights will take place in 2019. Today it is the only domestic wide-body long-range aircraft. But even in its modernized form, it cannot compete with Western analogues in terms of efficiency. Nevertheless, the decision is of a strategic nature, since Western companies may strengthen sanctions and deprive the Russian aviation market of imported spare parts.