The CR929 – New Challenger for Airbus, Boeing - By Daisy BARRO

 

The CRAIC CR929 is a joint venture project between Chinese and Russian manufacturers. 

A Sino-Russian partnership called CRAIC (China-Russia Commercial Aircraft International Corporation) is getting ready to take the aircraft manufacturing sector by storm during the next decade with the production of a proposed jetliner called the CR929.

The Chinese side of this interesting project is represented by COMAC (Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China), while the Russian side is represented by UAC (United Aircraft Corporation). The two countries entered into said partnership in 2012, after authenticating that there exists demand for twin-aisle jetliners such as that which they are set to manufacture.

According to sources, the estimated cost of the project is $7 billion - $12 billion, with CRAIC planning to kick off mass production of the CR929 jetliners later in 2021. The Corporation hopes that the CR929 family would prove to be about 10-15% cheaper to operate than similar aircraft manufactured by Airbus and Boeing, and looks forward to obtaining about one-tenth of the duo-dominated widebody market.

It is expected that the three variants of the CR929 will be CR929-500, -600 and -700, leading to the conclusion that these upcoming jets will likely be competing with another three-variant design – the Boeing 787 Dreamliner family. With regards to its competition with European manufacturers, it has been suggested that the CR929-600 will compete with Airbus’ A330neo, as they are quite similar in terms of size and capacity.

Even though these aircraft are similar, experts note that the above Airbus and Boeing aircraft still have an edge over the proposed CR929 because they possess significant and therefore more favourable ranges than their Sino-Russian counterpart.

With the above factors to consider, it remains to be seen how much of a challenger the new CR929 will be in the face of already well established jets like those manufactured by Boeing and Airbus.