The fate of an airplane depends not only on its own struggle, but also on the historical process.

There is a very interesting scene in Young and Dangerous.

Eight years ago, the big head of Ma Zi went to prison for his big brother, and was released after eight years. After he was released from prison, the big head was already in despair. At this time, his former good brother Chen Haonan invited him to join the club to make a living, but the big head asked Chen Haonan:

"You talk about the underworld so badly, so you go to HSBC to collect protection money?"

In this sentence, it proves that the eight-year prison in Datou has not been wasted-the young and dangerous people seem to be rampant, but in fact they simply wear the center of the earth-the way they make money is too low-end and disgraceful.

The concept of "decency" is simply too important for high-end bureaus.

Young and dangerous people don't need to be decent. Chen Haonan and pheasant directly carry watermelon knives to collect protection money, and when they are finished, they go drinking and gambling with the little mute.

This is a typical low-end game: keeping your mouth shut is asking for money, eating badly and being very uncivilized.

But the high-end game is different. Although it also costs money, both the efficiency of making money and the amount finally earned are much more advanced than the players in the low-end game. Car brands will divide cars into different grades and provoke people's comparison psychology; Consumer brands will mobilize KOL people to create demand, let everyone save money obediently, and even form brand worship.

These operations are not only reasonable, legal and compliant, but also have a huge brand effect.

It can be seen that whether individuals or enterprises, "can you express your demands gracefully and decently?" It is the necessary accomplishment of every high-end player-if you invite a girl to your home directly, you will be killed as a hooligan with great probability; But if you say, "My cat can do backflips, would you like to come and see it?" That's another story.

Americans always say that "China enterprises threaten the national security of the United States", but it is actually just a trick to maintain "decency". In international high-end bureaus, there are many "decent tips" like this, such as the "airworthiness certificate" problem faced by C919.

The interest relationship behind the airworthiness certificate

Isn't C919 suitable for commercial flight?

This is a joke.

From the product level, C919 is quite reliable, otherwise we will not allow it to go to heaven, and domestic major airlines will not purchase it on such a large scale.

But the problem is that if the C919 can only fly in China, then this project can hardly be called "complete success"-the trunk airliner that has spent so much money on research and development must compete in the global market. Once entering the global competition, it will inevitably threaten the interests of Boeing and Airbus.

In fact, the so-called global aviation market really has weight in North America, Asia-Pacific and Europe, which together account for more than 80% of the global aviation market. These large areas are precisely the core positions of Boeing and Airbus for many years. The remaining small market, if not the core, is often the "forbidden area" controlled by Boeing and Airbus for many years.

China Comac's C919 is a new player who has just arrived. Naturally, there is no problem in China's local market, but if you want to go out to sea and shake such a solid interest pattern, you need not only your own efforts, but also specific opportunities.

The reason why the C919 airworthiness certificate was delayed before was that the European aviation industry, represented by Airbus, thought that the China plane would impact the interests of the European aviation industry.

How worried is Airbus about the big plane in China?

Airbus has been the European's own "European substitution" since its birth. From beginning to end, its core mission is not to let Boeing occupy the European market. For this mission, Boeing and Airbus have been fighting a lawsuit over the subsidy policy for more than ten years. As a result, C919 just emerged two years ago, and Boeing Airbus immediately reached an epic reconciliation.

Lifelong mission, decades of opponents, and more than ten years of lawsuits, people say that they will put it down.

How much should we be afraid of the big plane in China?

I can only say: this is the tacit understanding between the old giants.

Now, things have changed.

Europeans gave positive comments to C919, and maybe they will get the airworthiness certificate next year.

This shows that: in the eyes of Europeans, the benefits brought by China's big plane outweigh the threats. Because the environment has changed, China's C919 has changed from showstopper, which hit the market, to a good man who brings opportunities. Although Airbus will still oppose the admission of C919 in a high probability, it can't stop the flood on the European land.

All this comes from the struggle and compromise of various forces in the European aviation industry after the change of interest pattern.

The important event that led to the loosening of the interest pattern is that Boeing Company of the United States is not doing well now.

02 Boeing, wilted.

In recent years, the life of Boeing aircraft has really been difficult.

In the first half of this year, Boeing sold only 156 planes. In terms of quantity alone, it is still quite high, but it is 70% lower than the same period of last year. Only 14 planes were sold in June, and in 2023, the number was 304.

Financial data of Boeing in the second quarter and the first half of this year

Why did Boeing suddenly pull? Because scandals have been too frequent in recent years. In 2018, the Indonesian Lion Air was in trouble. A 737MAX crashed and all 189 people were killed. The Ethiopian air crash in 2019 was another 737MAX, and all 157 people were killed. After the two air crashes, the whole world began to declare a ban on flying 737MAX, except Boeing's home base in North America.

The results of the accident investigation show that the problem comes from Boeing's flight control software.

After this year, the situation began to get worse.

From March 4 to 11, in a week, Boeing's plane had four accidents, including engine fire, tire falling, skidding off the runway and hydraulic oil leakage. To make matters worse, these accidents happened to different Boeing models. Even our own people can't stand it. An American captain named Dennis Tajie said: Driving a 737MAX is like watching a problem child. He has been flying a Boeing plane for so many years, and he is always nervous only when driving a 737MAX.

There is a famous "Heine Law" in management, which means that behind a serious accident, there must be 29 minor accidents, 300 near misses and 1000 hidden dangers. According to this logic, four serious accidents occurred in one week, and the number of accident precursors and hidden dangers behind Boeing aircraft is probably thousands of years ago.

Heine's law

The final result: Boeing's sales performance is bleak.

A century-old shop now seems to be the closest to collapse.

03 European concerns

Don't think that Boeing's bleakness is just a matter for Boeing.

Large passenger aircraft has been a very global industry since its birth. From Boeing to Airbus to our C919, almost every large aircraft is the result of cooperation between enterprises in many countries around the world.

On the Airbus plane, the radome comes from Nantes, the wing comes from Tianjin, China, and the horizontal tail comes from Getafes, Spain. On our 919, the engine is Safran, a joint venture between the United States and France, the landing gear is Honeywell of the United States, and the supplier of wing deicing system is Liebherr of Germany.

This is the real "you have me and I have you".

C919 supplier list

This means that the aviation industry practitioners all over the world are a community of interests. Airbus, Boeing and Comac of China are three big integrators, and other supply chain enterprises, led by these three, share the big cake of aviation industry together.

Nowadays, the aviation industry of the whole world has not yet come out of the epidemic, Boeing is miserable, our commercial aircraft has just started, and the "duopoly" pattern that has been maintained for many years has suddenly disappeared. In the recent period, the entire aviation industry has only one giant, Airbus.

For Airbus, the current market vacuum period is undoubtedly a good opportunity to achieve "one monopoly"-Airbus CEO Fu Li bluntly said: In terms of civil aircraft, we focus on the delivery of aircraft and prepare for the next capacity increase, while solving specific supply chain challenges and protecting the procurement of key work packages.

The meaning of this sentence is: while you are ill, it will kill you. Now our Airbus will start to explode its production capacity.

However, the good opportunity of Airbus is not necessarily good news for supply chain manufacturers.

The problem comes from two aspects:

First, Airbus's expansion plan may not be reliable.

This is often the case in the world. If the leaders at the top talk, the clerks at the bottom will break their legs. Airbus said that it should "prepare for the improvement of production capacity", and supply chain enterprises will have a headache-should my production line be expanded or not? Do you want to invite more masters? What should I do if Airbus doesn't have so many orders for me after I expand the production line here?

Airbus will not have any personal experience of supplier problems. All Airbus has done is "to continue to put pressure on suppliers to invest." -This last sentence was said by Thomas Topfer, chief financial officer of Airbus.

Second, Airbus has expanded its production capacity in China and North America.

The United States and China are the two largest aviation markets in the world. And "building a factory near the market" has become the standard operation of modern industry.

In the United States, Airbus has built a factory in Alabama since 2015, and added another production line in this factory in 2022. In China, Airbus started its layout early. In 2008, Airbus opened its first assembly line outside Europe in Tianjin, and plans to open a new assembly line in China in 2023 to better meet the demand.

Obviously, the United States and China, the two largest aviation markets, are the places that Airbus is most concerned about. Even if the production capacity is expanded, the high probability is to expand the production capacity of the Chinese and American markets. At that time, the suppliers used are also Chinese and American enterprises, which have nothing to do with those factories in Europe.

This, can suffer the European fellow villagers.

I'll bear the blame for the bitter European fellow villagers.

You know, many small countries in Europe, although low-key, have a very strong presence in specific industries.

Spain, for example, has not only become a co-founder of Airbus with Germany and France, but also has a deep relationship with Boeing, which has a history of more than 80 years. Moreover, both Boeing and Airbus have set up R&D centers in Spain, and a large number of suppliers are located in Spain.

Usually when Spain is mentioned, you can only think of football, but who would have thought that besides football, Spain is also the world's strongest producer of aviation carbon fiber.

To sum up, for Spanish and Italian, the rise and fall of aviation industry is almost tied to the national transportation-Boeing's decline in recent years has begun to make spanair industrial enterprises feel uncomfortable.

Boeing's sluggishness will lead to a decrease in orders from factories in Spain and Italy;

Airbus's focus on China and the United States will also lead to a decrease in factory orders in Spain and Italy.

Airbus's dominance is actually not conducive to European countries such as Spain and Italy, which also have a large number of aviation industries.

04 C919, a living bodhisattva of European hometown.

In this situation, you can understand why Europeans suddenly have "positive feedback" on C919.

Where is this a threat? This is clearly the Great Bodhisattva of the East coming down to help us come to Du Jie!

First of all, there is no need to worry about "production capacity"-because Europeans are quite aware of the importance of C919. As a star product of a big eastern country, its manufacturing tasks must be endless.

At present, the order quantity of C919 has exceeded 1300, of which 60% has been confirmed.

And according to the relevant laws and regulations of our country, the aircraft must be withdrawn from the passenger transport market after 20 years of age, while most of the passenger planes currently in service are about 10 years old-that is to say, China will have a wave of aircraft replacement around 2030, and we will have at least 1,000 production tasks in the next five to ten years.

Secondly, there is no need to worry about the "origin"-because China has been striving for the "airworthiness certificate" with the ultimate goal of entering the European market. And "building a factory near the market" itself is the basic operation and even the prerequisite of the aviation industry. When we purchased Airbus aircraft, the prerequisite was that Airbus had to open a factory in China. It's just that times have changed now, and we need to expand the market in Europe, so others naturally put forward similar conditions for us.

After getting the airworthiness certificate, C919 will probably set up a factory in Europe. To set up factories in Europe, countries with developed aviation industries and mature supply chains, such as Spain and Italy, will inevitably be chosen-this is in their interest.

05 conclusion

In fact, when I think about it carefully, I have to say that "opportunity" is really amazing.

Because Boeing is in a slump, it's just perfect.

If Boeing had been depressed a few years earlier, the result would have been quite unfavorable to us-at that time, we had not yet produced the C919, and it might have really made Airbus the only one. When Airbus stabilizes the supply chain within Europe, it will be really difficult for us to enter the European market.

If Boeing languishes a few years later, the result will not be too friendly to us-we may only develop in China because we don't have an airworthiness certificate, and it will be even more troublesome if there are any more moths in geopolitics.

Will Boeing die? Actually, it won't. Boeing's foundation is still there, and after a few years of slowing down, it is still a vassal all the way.

Therefore, this is an excellent opportunity for China Big Aircraft, and there will probably not be such a good opportunity in the next 20 years.

Sure enough, a person's fate depends not only on his own struggle, but also on the process of history.

However, this "historical process" will only be more and more in the future-the process of ——C919 entering Europe is essentially the process of a China brand entering the comfort zone of European and American traditional giants.