China’s Current Commercial Aircraft Production
Essentially all aircraft manufactured in China, as well as major com-ponents such as engines and propellers, are produced by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) and Commercial Aircraft Cor-poration of China, Ltd. (COMAC) and their subsidiaries. AVIC was created in 1993 from portions of the former Ministry of Aerospace Industry (Medeiros et al., 2005, p. 157). In 1999, AVIC was split into two corporations, AVIC I and AVIC II, but, in 2008, they were recom-bined and COMAC was spun off as an independent corporation (Per-rett, 2009, p. 313).
This chapter describes the current output of China’s commercial aircraft industry, as well as aircraft that are in development. It does not attempt to analyze the organizations, inputs, or processes involved in China’s production of commercial aircraft.
Commercial Passenger Aircraft
China currently produces two domestically designed commercial pas-senger aircraft: the MA60-series turboprop and the ARJ21 regional jet, which has not yet entered into service. China also performs final assembly on Airbus A320-series narrow-body airliners and produces the Embraer ERJ-145 regional jet under license.
Domestic Designs
MA60
The MA60 is a 60-seat turboprop airliner manufactured by the Xi’an Aircraft Corporation (XAC), an AVIC subsidiary. It traces its lineage
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back to the Soviet Antonov An-24 airliner. The An-24, a 52-seat tur-boprop plane, entered into service with the Soviet airline Aeroflot in 1963. China subsequently purchased 40 of these aircraft and reverse- engineered them, with production beginning in 1982 under the des-ignator Yun-7 (Y-7). The MA60 is simply an updated version of the Y-7, the previous version of which since 2001 has not met the CAAC’s airworthiness requirements. The first prototype MA60 flew in March 2000, and the aircraft was certified for production in December of that year. An upgrade of the Antonov-built aircraft, called the An-24RV-100, was unveiled in 2001, but the MA60 does not appear to be based on this upgrade. According to Chinese official statements, 52 MA60 aircraft had been produced by September 2008, and as of March 2010, more than 150 orders had supposedly been placed, 50 from foreign airlines and more than 100 from domestic airlines. How-ever, as of the end of 2009, only four examples appeared to be in service domestically. The first 11 production versions, moreover, had appar-ently been withdrawn from service by 2006 due to “reliability prob-lems and two runway overruns.” Production on an upgraded version (the MA60-100, sometimes called the MA600) began in 2008. XAC is said to have a production capacity of 12 to 15 of these aircraft a year (“XAC MA60”; “Antonov An-24”; “Xian (Antonov) Y-7”; “China Air-lines Directory 2010,” 2010).
ARJ21
The ARJ21 is a 90-seat regional jet that has been in testing since November 2008. The manufacturer, COMAC, partnered with Bom-bardier and based the design on the McDonnell Douglas MD-90, a few of which were co-produced in China in the 1990s. All the major subsystems are sourced to North American companies, including GE, Rockwell Collins, and Honeywell. The wings, the remaining most technically challenging aspect of an airplane, were designed by the Antonov Aeronautical Scientific/Technical Complex of Ukraine.
　
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