On the eve of the National Day, Air China and China Southern Airlines' first domestically produced C919 aircraft were put into commercial operation, and with the addition of China Eastern Airlines' C919, which has been in operation for more than a year, the domestic large aircraft officially opened a new stage of multi-user operation.

Earlier, the domestic regional aircraft ARJ21 has taken the lead in flying into the sky, and there are currently 8 domestic and foreign users in operation. The manufacturer of both domestic models is COMAC, and there are more parts and raw material companies behind it.

With the gradual increase in the number of airlines receiving domestic aircraft, COMAC has also begun to enter the stage of mass production, and the increase in production also means that more parts and raw material companies will share the "cake" of domestic aircraft manufacturing.

Fly to more cities

The C919 aircraft is a large jet civil aircraft developed by China in accordance with international civil aviation regulations and has independent intellectual property rights; The ARJ21 aircraft is the first new short-range turbofan regional aircraft developed by China in accordance with international civil aviation regulations and has independent intellectual property rights.

At present, Air China's C919 aircraft mainly flies on the Beijing-Shanghai and Beijing-Hangzhou routes, while China Southern Airlines' C919 aircraft mainly flies on the Guangzhou-Shanghai and Guangzhou-Hangzhou routes. Both companies' C919 aircraft fly four times a day.

It is worth noting that when China Eastern Airlines received the world's first C919, it was flying at a pace of two segments a day for a long time, which also made the daily utilization rate of China Eastern Airlines C919 last year only 5.03 hours, compared with the daily utilization rate of Boeing 737 and Airbus 320 series of the same level of more than 8 hours, there is a big gap.

Air China and China Southern Airlines' C919 aircraft flew four times a day in the early days of acceptance, which is not unrelated to the experience accumulated by China Eastern Airlines C919 in one year of flight, as well as the improvement of domestic aircraft maintenance capabilities, and with the increase in flight hours, the stability of domestic aircraft is also increasing.

On May 28 last year, China Eastern Airlines' C919 was the first to be put into commercial operation, and has accumulated more than 10,000 hours of safe flights, carried more than 3,700 commercial flights, carried more than 510,000 passengers, and expanded its flight routes to Shanghai Hongqiao-Chengdu Tianfu, Shanghai Hongqiao-Beijing Daxing, Shanghai Hongqiao-Xi'an Xianyang, Shanghai Hongqiao-Guangzhou Baiyun, and Xi'an Xianyang-Beijing Daxing.

More airlines have already visited more cities, including Indonesia.

According to the reporter's understanding, a total of 7 passenger airlines in China, including Chengdu Airlines, Tianjiao Airlines, Jiangxi Airlines, Air China, 123 Airlines, China Southern Airlines, and China Express Airlines, are operating ARJ21 aircraft, and many airlines have placed this model in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia markets, while foreign user Lingya Airlines uses ARJ21 aircraft to transport between Indonesian islands.

According to the latest statistics from Flight Steward, the number of ARJ21s currently in operation has increased by 27 compared to 2023. Most of the top 10 outbound routes of regional airports are Mombasa-Nairobi and Xinjiang routes, among which Xinjiang Yining ranks first in terms of take-off and landing flights.

Expansion of production line

The reporter learned from Air China and China Southern Airlines that both companies plan to receive three C919 passenger planes this year, and the second and third are planned to be received after the National Day, and the routes will be further expanded to Chengdu and other places.

In addition, Suparna Airlines, a subsidiary of Shanghai Airlines Aviation Group, plans to receive the first C919 passenger aircraft in the fourth quarter of this year, and China Eastern Airlines revealed in its semi-annual report that it will receive four more C919 aircraft in the second half of the year, which means that COMAC will produce at least 10 C919 aircraft this year.

This pace of delivery is still far from the delivery volume of hundreds of Airbus and Boeing. According to the data disclosed by the two companies, Airbus delivered 142 civil aircraft in the first quarter of this year, including 116 A320 family aircraft, and the company expects to deliver 800 aircraft in 2024, and plans to reach a monthly production of 75 A320 family aircraft in 2026; Boeing, on the other hand, saw a decline in deliveries of the 737 due to well-known problems, but it also produced 38 aircraft per month in the first quarter.

In this regard, COMAC told reporters that the delivery rhythm of any new research and development aircraft is from small batch delivery to large batch delivery, and the increase in production is also a slow process.

For the future production capacity planning of the C919 aircraft, Zhang Yujin, deputy general manager of COMAC, revealed last year that the planning of the C919 is to reach 150 aircraft in the next five years.

At present, COMAC is already planning the expansion of the C919 production line. According to the information disclosed by the Aviation Industry Planning Institute, the second assembly line is located in Pudong New Area, Shanghai, with a total construction area of about 330,000 square meters, mainly including the construction of the assembly plant of the headquarters of the passenger headquarters, the general warehouse of the large passenger parts, outdoor roads, greening, apron and other construction content, covering the construction of production lines, process optimization, equipment upgrades and the improvement of related supporting facilities. The completion of the project will meet the future mass production needs of C919 large passenger aircraft, effectively improve the production efficiency of C919 large passenger aircraft, and provide a strong guarantee for the commercial operation and market competition of domestic large aircraft.

Share the domestic aircraft industry chain

Large aircraft are known as the crown of modern manufacturing, with great technical difficulty and long industrial chain. Wang Yan, captain of Air China's C919 first flight, told reporters that when he saw the C919 aircraft for the first time, he was full of pride, "This is a large trunk airliner completely independently developed by us Chinese, and every detail of it represents the highest level of China's aviation industry." ”

According to the reporter's understanding, the domestic large aircraft is mainly developed in accordance with the path of "Chinese design, system integration, global bidding, and gradual improvement of localization". It is estimated that by 2026, there will be about 150 local supporting suppliers and partners in the large aircraft industry chain, and the scale of the large aircraft industry will reach about 80 billion yuan.

At present, a large number of local aviation manufacturing-related enterprises have participated in the industrial chain of domestic large aircraft, including many listed companies.

For example, in terms of raw materials, there are Baosteel shares (600019. SH), Aluminum Corporation of China (601600. SH), Nanshan Aluminum (600219. SH), Fushun Special Steel (600399. SH), Baoti shares (600456) and others participated.

According to the reporter's understanding, China Baowu Steel Group and China Aluminum Group are the founding shareholders of COMAC, and Baoti is the only titanium material supplier for domestic large aircraft projects, and has passed the quality system and product certification of many international giants such as Boeing, Airbus, Rolls-Royce of United Kingdom, European Aerospace Industry Association and RMI of United States.

In terms of spare parts, AVIC Xifei (000768. SZ) is the largest manufacturer of C919 fuselage structure, undertaking the development of key core components such as fuselage and wings; Aerospace Huanyu (688523. SH) undertook the development of C919 composite horizontal tail, vertical tail, rear fuselage and other parts of the molding process equipment and semi-automatic production line; Jianghang Equipment(688586. SH) has carried out the development of C919 oxygen system and inert protection system; Sichuan Jiuzhou(000801. SZ) undertook the development of the C919 cabin broadcast subsystem and flight command vehicle.

In the Shanghai Lingang New Area, a number of key domestic and foreign enterprises such as COMAC, China Building Materials, and Zhongfu Shenying have gathered, covering some core and key links of the industrial chain such as airframe structure, composite materials, commercial aero engines, and airborne systems.

However, according to the reporter's understanding, the most technically difficult and valuable engine part in aircraft R&D and manufacturing, the current C919 is powered by GE Aerospace's LEAP-1C engine.

As the main body of China's research and development of aero engines, the CJ1000A engine developed by AECC has been loaded on a general flight platform modified by the Y-20 transport aircraft in the aviation industry test flight center, and the future domestic C919 large passenger aircraft is also expected to be installed with the domestic "heart".

According to the relevant research report of GF Securities, according to the calculation of the Institute of Aviation Economics of the Civil Aviation University of China, if calculated according to the life cycle of civil aircraft of 10 years, the contribution ratio of large aircraft to China's economic added value is 1:86, and the employment contribution ratio is 1:9.6. Based on the current input-output ratio of large aircraft of 1:80, under the condition of maintaining the current localization rate of C919, domestic large aircraft is expected to bring a market size of trillions of yuan to industrial chain enterprises. With the increase of localization rate, it will drive the industrial chain and supply chain to a new level.