China’s Comac poised to rise on Boeing’s downfall

The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, better known as Comac, plans to triple its production capacity to meet rising domestic demand for passenger jets, an expansion that coincides with ongoing troubles for American aviation giant Boeing’s planes.

The chances that Comac will overtake the maligned and mismanaged US plane maker in China’s booming aviation market are rising. But so too are the chances that the US might respond with new sanctions targeting Comac and other Chinese plane makers.

Comac plans to establish a second manufacturing site in Shanghai with an assembly line for its C919 narrow-body passenger jet and related logistics facilities, according to recent reports. The reported goal is to raise Comac’s annual production capacity from about 50 aircraft now to 150 later in the decade.

The C919 can carry up to 192 passengers and travel 5,555 kilometers, putting it in competition with the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320. With only five C919s delivered so far, Comac is just getting started in competing for market share. But Chinese reports suggest Comac’s order backlog already exceeds 1,000 aircraft.

Specifically, the fledgling Chinese aircraft assembler has received orders for about 300 aircraft from China Air, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines, with deliveries scheduled through 2031. Tibet Airlines, meanwhile, ordered 40 C919s in February.

Limited disclosure makes comparisons difficult but Boeing reported that it had 140 completed B737 MAX 8 aircraft in inventory, of which 85 were destined for China, at the end of 2023. Of these, only 22 had been delivered by the end of April.

The MAX 8 is one of four variants of the Boeing 737 MAX series of narrow-body passenger jets. It entered commercial