China’s COMAC falls behind on C919 aircraft delivery targets, filings show

By Lisa Barrington

(Reuters) -Chinese Plazer Comac, according to regulatory applications from three flying airlines, falls to the delivery targets for the production of the narrow object C919 commercial plane.

According to airline financial reports and data from Ch-Aviation and Flightradar24, China Eastern Airlines, Air China and China Southern were waiting for 32 aircraft to be delivered this year, but only five of Comac were delivered24.

Bloomberg, referring to sources familiar with the issue, Bloomberg’s Wednesday, a state -owned manufacturer’s own C919 production target this year has reduced the previously specified 75 targets to 25. Comac did not respond immediately to the request for comments.

Comac said it plans to deliver 30 C919 aircraft in January and scale the annual production capacity to 50 aircraft in 2025. In March, it increased its production target to 75.

Comac is trying to compete with dozens of single corridors A320neo family and 737 maximum jet producers Airbus and Boeing.

Comac faced unexpected difficulties this year, which temporarily stopped the exports of CFM engines used by the US in C919 in C919 as the trade tensions increased this year. A fundamental fragility of China’s jet production program is that the main elements of designs use foreign parts.

The C919, which does not have comparison certificates of Major Aviation organizers, received orders from Chinese customers and two airlines in Brunei and Cambodia – both of them are Beijing allies.

Aviation Consultancy IBA said that C919 production targets were ambitious last month and expected “more measured growth” from the manufacturer.

The IBA would be delivered around 18 C919 in 2025 and around 25 in 2026 and rose to about 45 in 2027.

China East, Air China and China Southern ordered 100 jets each.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington in Seoul; Additional reports by Sophie YU in Beijing; Editing by Jamie Freed)