China’s renaming of its regional jet is another clear sign its homegrown planemaker is coming for Boeing and Airbus
The ARJ21, COMAC’s first commercially available plane, was rebranded on Tuesday to the C909.
The Chinese planemaker COMAC on Tuesday rebranded its regional jet to fit a unified naming style among all of its aircraft, playing into its ambition to eventually earn a share in the international market.
The up-and-coming manufacturer turned heads last year when it launched its first homegrown airliner, the medium-range C919, which is meant to compete with the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320.
Now, the state-owned COMAC has said its smaller ARJ21 will be dubbed the C909, in keeping with the C919’s nomenclature.
The C909 is older than its bigger cousin, with development starting in 2002 and its first commercial flight taking off in June 2016. Its previous name, the ARJ21, stood for Advanced Regional Jet for the 21st Century.
The C909, formerly known as the ARJ21, is a smaller plane that seats five abreast.
As a regional plane, it’s technically fit for flights up to four or five hours — think trips such as New York City to Miami.
Still, the Boeing and Airbus duopoly should have little to fear from the Chinese plane. Offering about 70 to 90 seats, the C909 is often compared to the Boeing 717, which was marketed to airlines in the 1990s.
How the C909 fits into COMAC’s plans
David Yu, a professor of finance at New York University Shanghai, told B-17 the rebrand displayed COMAC’s intention to go international as a whole.
“If you look at market norms, really no other player has done this in terms of rebranding their aircraft. Unless it’s in an M&A play,” said Yu, who also runs the advisory firm Asia Aviation Valuation Advisors.
COMAC is expected to soon debut another plane with a similar name, the C929, a larger 290-passenger aircraft. The Chinese firm is also working on an even bigger plane, the C939, a wide-body jet with 390 seats.
Yu said renaming the ARJ21 as the C909 would allow the Chinese planemaker to market a full range of aircraft variants under one name — just like how Airbus and Boeing sell their planes.
Boeing, for example, provides a range of seat capacities from 138 to 204 passengers through the 737 Max 7, 8, 9, and 10.
That doesn’t change the plane’s technical capabilities, but it streamlines the company’s offerings into one family.
“If you think about it from a holistic perspective, they want the smallest aircraft and the biggest aircraft, and every single segment in between to be competitive,” Yu said of COMAC.
A new name doesn’t mean more sales for the C909
During its Tuesday announcement at the Zhuhai air show in China, COMAC said the C909 would be lighter, more resistant, and less noisy than the ARJ21.
That said, Brendan Sobie, an aviation consultant in Singapore, said the new name might not help COMAC sell the C909 internationally.
For one, the plane’s aged tech puts it at a disadvantage, he told B-17.
“Anytime you have a new aircraft, it’s about when the plane was initially developed. With this, everything was selected 20 years ago,” Sobie said.
Just over 100 of the Chinese aircraft have been sold to Chinese airlines and TransNusa Airlines, an Indonesian carrier.
Sobie added that more attention had instead been focused on the milestone narrow-body C919.
COMAC’s larger and newer C919 typically sits six abreast and is meant to compete with the likes of the 737 and A320.
The newer plane’s launch has come as both Airbus and Boeing suffer from delivery delays that have frustrated their airline customers. Over the past year, Boeing has also faced a reckoning over the safety of its 737s after a door plug blew out of one of its planes mid-flight.
“There is some kind of appetite for another player in the market, but COMAC has to overcome a lot of challenges,” Sobie said.
For example, neither the C919 nor the C909 are certified by American or European aviation authorities, though COMAC has been pushing hard for the C919’s approval.
“You haven’t seen a big, flagship, independently managed airline commit yet to these aircraft because they do have to be certified,” Sobie said.
Where the manufacturer and its C909 could pose a greater threat to Boeing and Airbus is China. Domestic airlines there operate more than 4,300 Boeing planes and 1,700 Airbus aircraft, and China has already approved COMAC’s planes for commercial use.
Chinese media lauded the C909 rebrand on Tuesday, reporting that local airlines had ordered 70 of the renamed aircraft.
Yu said that if COMAC could make the C919 and C909 economically attractive to airlines, it stood a chance of grabbing market share both at home and abroad.
“I think, ultimately, the question is whether the airline can make money off of it. That’s the main thing,” he said.
An Airbus spokesperson told B-17 that COMAC’s developments would “not stop us from being present in the markets where we have significant customer demand,” including China.
“We have always indicated that we saw upcoming competition from COMAC, and it is now a reality, starting with the Chinese market,” the spokesperson said.
Boeing didn’t respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business by B-17.
