C919 reveals potential of China's civil aviation market, says expert

GENEVA - The C919, China's self-developed large passenger aircraft, reveals the high potential of China's civil aviation market, according to an expert.

The Chinese manufacturer has been "successful in passenger comfort," said Philippe Meyer, an aviation consultant based in Switzerland, told Xinhua in a recent interview via video conference. "They have proven that they can design a plane."

With eight business class and 156 economy seats, this single-aisle C919 aircraft has various passenger-friendly features, such as a 2.25-meter-high aisle ceiling and drop-down overhead bins. The middle seat of the economy class is 1.5 cm wider than its neighboring seats.

The C919, built by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, Ltd (COMAC), completed its first commercial flight from Shanghai to Beijing last month. Operated by China Eastern Airlines, it marked its official entry into the civil aviation market.

"China is going to be the biggest civil aviation market quicker than we think," said Meyer, who is also an International Air Transport Association (IATA) airline marketing and airport business management professor.

The aviation expert expressed expectations of the vitality and potential of China's civil aviation market, noting that travels following the COVID-19 pandemic played a big role as Chinese tourists are eager to travel more.

"There is an explosion of demand in China," commented Meyer, noting that 1 billion Chinese people will travel by air annually by 2035.

Some 4.35 billion people worldwide are expected to travel in 2023, which is not far off the 4.54 billion people who took a flight in 2019, said an IATA report, noting an anticipated strengthening of airline industry profitability in an upgrade of its outlook for 2023.

Airline industry net profits are expected to reach $9.8 billion in 2023, more than double the forecast of $4.7 billion published in December 2022, said IATA.

By 2041, China is expected to become the world's largest single-country civil aviation market, according to a forecast released by the COMAC last year.

"We all have to prepare everywhere in the world for the rush of Chinese tourists again," Meyer said.

Alongside the flourishing market and the expectedly strong demand, challenges remain. "The biggest challenge now is to produce the plane. If they only build one plane a month, this is not going to be enough to satisfy the demand," he said.

Noting China's cheaper but also skilled labor compared to the West, Meyer said the need for an after-sales network in China and the producing scale were major headwinds. Still, the Chinese want to "reduce their dependency on the duopoly on Western products."

Meyer was optimistic that China would become the world's largest aviation market.

"Today, we have a duopoly with Airbus and Boeing," he said. "With the C919, we have a real new plane which, for the first time, is able to compete against these two players in the biggest markets."