The first plane produced by a Chinese government initiative to compete in the market for large passenger jetliners has been unveiled in Shanghai.
The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) showed off its twin-engine C919 in a ceremony on Monday attended by some 4,000 government officials and other guests at a hangar near the Pudong International Airport.
For China, the plane represents at least seven years of efforts in a state-mandated drive to reduce dependence on European consortium Airbus and Boeing of the United States, and even compete against them.
"China's air transport industry cannot completely rely on imports. A great nation must have its own large commercial aircraft," the country's civil aviation chief Li Jiaxiang told an audience of government and industry officials.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by iamjacksusername on Tuesday November 03 2015, @02:59PM
Boeing taught the Chinese suppliers how to make aircraft components. They sold out their expertise in an effort to reduce costs. It did not work, of course. They had to fly Boeing engineers to the suppliers to teach them how to do the thing Boeing was paying the supplier to do. The end result was an aircraft billions over budget and years late. And they taught their competitors how to build a modern aircraft, probably moving their competitors ahead by a decade.
Forbes post-mortem on the Dreamliner outsourcing debacle:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/01/21/what-went-wrong-at-boeing/ [forbes.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Nerdfest on Tuesday November 03 2015, @03:10PM
"Death by MBA"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 03 2015, @03:46PM
Ah, I was wondering if the Chinese plane was a copy of a Boeing plane or a copy of an Airbus plane, and this answers it.