Posted on 12/21/2007 10:39:15 AM PST by charles m
SHANGHAI, China (AP) China's first fully homegrown commercial aircraft rolled off the production line Friday, marking a potential milestone for the country's aviation program.
In a nationally televised ceremony, the Xiangfeng, or "Flying Phoenix," was towed into a hangar at the Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing Factory amid flashing laser lights and rousing music. The rollout ceremony was closed to most media, apart from state-run CCTV and the official Xinhua News Agency.
"Today, China's aviation industry has turned over a new leaf," Lin Zuoming, general manager of China Aviation Industry Corp. I, or AVIC I, said in comments carried on the news channel of China Central Television.
The maiden flight for the the ARJ-21 is planned for March. It will carry up to 90 passengers and have a flight range of 2,300 miles, according to Xinhua.
AVIC I plans to begin deliveries to customers in the third quarter of 2009, it said.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration opened an office in Shanghai in March and is working on safety standards with China's General Administration of Civil Aviation.
Original plans called for the jet to be ready by late 2005, but design problems forced a delay.
The highly touted project aims to make state-owned AVIC I a competitor to other makers of smaller passenger jets, such as Canada's Bombardier Inc. and Brazil's Embraer SA, while laying the groundwork for development of a commercial jet twice the size of the ARJ-21.
"A country's aviation industry is not complete unless it is able to produce civilian aircraft," said AVIC I's Lin.
The manufacturer says the ARJ-21 is expected to grab up to 60 percent of the domestic market for mid-size regional airliners over the next 20 years.
China will need about 900 mid-sized regional jets over the next two decades, the company estimates, as economic growth drives an expansion of air travel and airlines look for planes best tailored to feeder routes.
Nothing funny about it. It does give me reason to think about my mortality ever time I have to fly on one of them.
TU-134, DC-9, F-28, B-727, CRJ, EMB, etc. all followed the basic layout of the BAC1-11. I think BAC even ended up selling the tooling to the non-Russian commies at one point.
Geocentric Americans tend to think that the Americans didn’t ape foreign designs (or at least hire foreign designers). C-130 had some Brits working on the design, early American postwar jet fighter designs borrowed heavily from the Germans; even the newest Boeings have a touch of Russian in them.
Would love to see if it meets ANY regulations for fire and toxicity levels for the interior components. We spent years and many, many hundreds of thousands of dollars developing composite materials used to manufacture the sidewalls, stowage bins, bulkhead, etc. Had to conform to stringent standards for heat release and toxic fumes.
One good point though, I imagine that if you are caught in a fire inside one of these you will die of toxic smoke far before you burn to a crisp....
It appears there is enough momentum for them to be on track to roll out a commercial jetliner by 2020. Personally, I think it'll happen before then.
I graduated from the American School in London. We had Canadian students too. They had maple leaves sewn all over their clothes and backpacks. Just so no European would confuse them with us. It didn’t work. Nobody knew that a maple leaf was a flag.
New Zealanders have the same problem with Australia.
It looks like they might have done away with those four un-necessary overwing exits of the MD-90, too.
Nobody is getting out alive, so why bother.
Well now that the Chi-Coms have a domestic airline industry the c.i.a. will cry from the hills that they are about to bury us.
Gotta have a representative boogie man or else those massive military and spy budgets won’t keep coming.
Lotta good they do, the c.i.a. didn’t even see the fall of the soviet union. GREAT.
There are only 4 emergency exits for 90 passengers. That seems very low. Maybe they use the turbines to expedite exit from the aircraft.
Somehow I think the safety briefing will sound like one given by the loadmaster on a USAF flight I took.
“There are emergency exit doors there and there. You can also use the paratroop doors at the rear of the aircraft, but I suggest you look for any large holes in the fuselage and climb out through the closest opening. ...and if I am unconscious, drag my fat ass out with you.”
"C-130 had some Brits working on the design, early American postwar jet fighter designs borrowed heavily from the Germans; even the newest Boeings have a touch of Russian in them."The C-130 was designed in good part by one man, Willis M. Hawkins of KC Missouri.
LOL!
He headed the team that developed the proposal. That doesn’t mean he designed the whole thing by himself.
Yep, DC copy.
Pressurization double-lock, anyone?! Hi-jacking counter-measures, anyone?! Single point of failure, anyone?!
The DC-9 could get away with mounting it's engines there because the JT8D engines have a flow straightening vane in front of the fan that will kill any vortex flow that come off the the wing that the engine eats (and they weren't running right on the verge of surge like modern, efficient engines)
The CF34 has no such flow straightener and is a larger diameter so it will be eating more vortex flow.
Its like putting a 1.8L Honda motor in a 1970's Pickup truck...They both made 160 Net HP, so it should work, right?
If they ever built a prototype before they went into production, they might have found this out.
I won't be flying on one.
That look too big Monk where they going landed I doubt LAX LOL!
They did build a prototype. This Chinese jet was designed so it could handle airports in Tibet (high altitude, thin air). Not the most efficient plane that’s for sure.
Well yeah duhh. But it was the back of his "napkin", his preliminary design, his load paths, his wing/body/tail sizing. After much of that many stress engineers don't care (and sadly some wouldn't even know) if they were spacing ribs for an aircraft or trusses for a bridge.
The entire life cycle of an aircraft is often decided in the beginning of its preliminary design. Later trade studies can only do so much for the weight and performance problems of a bad idea. And that brilliant beginning of the C-130, one of the most effective designs in aeronautical history, was all American.
As for your main argument I heartily agree that many other American designs borrowed heavily from other sources. I think the best example of that is the EE Canberra and the Lockheed U2.
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