COMAC Has More Bad News

It’s bad news for Chinese planemaker COMAC, whose Christmas has been marred by an inability to meet delivery targets.

Those delivery targets centre on the C919; this single-aisle jet is aimed at challenging Airbus and Boeing and their A320neo and 737 MAX families, respectively.

COMAC’s delivery target for 2025 was around 75 aircraft. This was an ambitious figure; it was hoped that it could be reached as it continued to try to show the industry it meant business. However, that became increasingly unlikely over time.

As the prospects of this occurring dwindled, COMAC decided to slash overall delivery targets by 50 units to a more modest 25 over 12 months, but now that seems even more unlikely.

Bloomberg reports that, thanks to data from leading platforms, COMAC has fallen miserably short this year and will not meet its annual delivery target of 25 units, stemming from poor perfromance of the flagship model.

Just 13 of the C919 jets had been shipped as of available figures, up until days before Christmas. This figure is on par with deliveries in the same period one year prior, but is ultimately far below what the planemaker would’ve hoped to achieve this year.

For COMAC, this has been a year of bad development after bad development. The revision of deliveries for the year represented an admission that the figures would not be reached as expected, but even the revised figures now seem unlikely to be met.

For the airlines, primarily those from China that are relying on the delivery of these aircraft to help power their single-aisle operations, it’s further bad news for their renewal efforts, and COMAC’s attempts to bridge the gap between itself and competitors by obtaining approval to begin flying in countries in the Western parts of the world.

COMAC is also hopeful that in the coming years production rates for its aircraft will continue to rise, whether with its flagship C919 or even the regional and smaller C909, but as is visible with its current partners of Airbus and Boeing, jumping production on these types is easier said than done, and 2025 has highlighted the many problems persisting.

But COMAC Targets A New Order

In that chase for new commercial orders, and especially for markets outside of China, it was reported in November, thanks to Yicaiglobal, that Malaysia Airlines was in the process of studying the future of its commercial aeroplanes division.

As part of those studies, the airline was considering COMAC as a possible option to power its fleet, as part of an evaluation of what the five-year period from 2035 to 2040 would look like for the business.

Malaysia Airlines says that it has been in discussions with COMAC now for over a year, and those discussions reportedly deepened further in the second quarter, with much of the focus on the C919.

The view is that, while no decision has been made, the C919 offers significant possibilities for the Kuala Lumpur-based company, with the focus now on not just operating metrics but also what a future with this aircraft would look like.

Unlike Airbus and Boeing planes, there’s still some scepticism among many airlines about the COMAC product. Malaysia Airlines was forced to more closely consider safety, airworthiness, and support for the fleet once the jet could be delivered.

COMAC will now be challenged to show Malaysia Airlines why they should commit to their aircraft, a decision keen to be reached by the Group sometime next year. Factory visits are likely to be expected as well to understand better how the Chinese planemaker aims to raise rates and provide airlines with the global support they require.

This is an opportunity for this business, which is very keen to take it up as it tries to expand its market reach, but at the same time, the company struggles to meet 2025 delivery targets.