First Chinese single-aisle Comac C919 inches closer to service with China Eastern as the country bolsters its aircraft development ecosystem.
Brazil’s thrice-elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is slated to meet with China’s leader Xi Jinping on April 14, in a pivotal visit between the nations with a potentially profound impact on western aerospace.
Boeing rolls-out final 747 EVERETT — It was the one-thousand five-hundredth and seventy-fourth — and final — time a 747...
EVERETT — It was the one-thousand five-hundredth and seventy-fourth — and final — time a 747 left Boeing’s Everett, Washington...
Log-in here if you’re already a subscriber Release DateNovember 1, 2022Boeing nears, but doesn’t yet clear, the first of three...
Log-in here if you’re already a subscriber Release DateSeptember 29, 2022Boeing postures for a long freeze inside ChinaPurchase a PDF...
Log-in here if you’re already a subscriber Release DateSeptember 8, 2022A different way to think about the future of flying...
Denial of aviation is a weapon that predates the 21st century battlefield. Yet, with the return of war to Europe, it is also aviation’s Achilles’ heel. With it comes a cascading series of immediate and longer term consequences in the skies as commercial and industrial links are quickly broken after decades of cultivation following the fall of the Soviet Union.
Yet, even with this key development, the jet will return to a transforming Chinese aviation ecosystem that bears little resemblance to the world just before the Max was grounded in March 2019. Since then, the dynamics between the U.S. and China have shifted considerably, along with a pandemic that has reshaped its logistical relationship with the world. And all this against the backdrop of major shifts in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s approach to western business.
Yet, over the past week, chatter across a cadre of Chinese aviation watchers and social media postings suggested that the prototype MA700 had made its maiden flight around Sept. 23 or 24 from the the Aviation Industry Corporation of China’s (Avic) manufacturing plant at Yanliang Air Base in Xian, where China produces many of its military aircraft. The new April 2021 footage was the first public appearance of any MA700 progress since March 2020 when Avic and Xian rolled-out the first static test airframe. Chinese state media had reported in early 2020 that MA700 was slated to fly before the end of that year.
“Boeing is very much relying upon that commercial pressure from the airlines in China, putting political pressure on Beijing...And so far it hasn’t happened yet,” said Air Lease CEO John Plueger.
Boeing has started building 737 Max aircraft again for China, but the plane maker Comac -- its Chinese counterpart -- are at the mercy of the peculiar adversarial interdependence between China and the U.S.
