Joint project with Russia becomes only Chinese (video)

The long-range aircraft project was until recently a joint “brainchild” of Russia and China. Now China is working on it alone and presents it as its own.

At the Farnborough International Airshow, at the stand of the Chinese aircraft manufacturing corporation COMAC, A model of the long-range wide-body airliner C929 is presented. Earlier, it was called CR929, and Rostec claimed that the letter C in the name stood for China, and the letter R for Russia. Now, the letter R has disappeared from the aircraft's name.

Now Russian aircraft manufacturers are not involved in the long-range aircraft project, and China has presented it as its own – Russia is not mentioned in its description. A representative of the Chinese company, on condition of anonymity, confirmed BBC that China is now working on the project alone.

Meanwhile The long-haul aircraft is a critical part of Russia's transport infrastructure. Such liners are ideal for providing transport accessibility to the Far Eastern regions from the central part of the country. More In the early 2010s, negotiations began on the possibility of developing such a project, and in 2014, during Vladimir Putin's visit to China, a memorandum of cooperation was signed between the United Aircraft Company (UAC) and China's Comac, which envisages the construction of such an aircraft.

In Russia, the project was presented at the MAKS-2019 air show in Zhukovsky, and in China, its presentation took place at the end of 2018 at Airshow China in Zhuhai. At that time, a full-size model of part of the fuselage and cockpit of the airliner was shown in both countries.

In June 2018, UAC and COMAC announced that they had agreed on the main geometric characteristics of the aircraft: the span and shape of the wing and tail, the length of the fuselage, the location of the engines, chassis and doors.

In July 2024, at the Farnborough Airshow, the aircraft was shown on the Comac stand as a scale model, with its characteristics presented on a poster. There was no information about Russia's participation in the project either in the press release or on the company's stand.

A source at the company did not give any reason or time for Russia's withdrawal from the project. Comac employees at the company's stand at the air show declined to comment.

A year ago, at the Le Bourget Air Show in France, the poster for the airliner project also lacked information about Russia's participation. And in the summer of 2022, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Denis Manturov, then Minister of Industry and Trade, announced a revision of the project. The BBC Russian Service sent a request to the UAC and the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and is waiting for a response.

The CR929 project was developed against the backdrop of international sanctions against Russia related to the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol in 2014. After the start of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, sanctions against Russia have been tightened. The supply of spare parts for civil aviation is effectively blocked.

Today, Russian airlines still have foreign long-haul airliners in their fleets. Aeroflot alone has 22 Boeing 777ERs in service. In the future, they are to be replaced by the modernized Il-96, an aircraft of Soviet design.

The head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Anton Alikhanov said on July 9: “We 100% need a long-haul aircraft.” According to him, this aircraft should cover about 15% of transportation – Russian-made SSJ-100 and MC-21 aircraft cannot cover them:

«[Эти 15%] must absolutely be covered by our aircraft. Therefore, the Il family in one of the possible configurations will take on this function, taking into account the required modifications.”

It is difficult to predict the timing of the modernization of the Russian aircraft. In May, Rostec CEO Sergei Chemezov, in a conversation with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, said that the corporation he heads plans to develop the PD-35 engine and build long-haul aircraft based on it in two to three years, Russian aviation news agencies reported.

Timeline of events in the video:

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