Another attempt to get a regional aircraft programme off the ground in China has failed, it seems. Airbus may not yet be prepared to sign off the death certificate on its AE31X programme with the Chinese, but with talks broken off and no business case having emerged for the 100-seater, the venture is as good as dead. Few will be surprised. The canny Singaporeans had already left the venture and even Airbus has been studying a potential rival in the A319M5.
Neither is this the first regional airliner project to fail in South-East Asia. Recent history is littered with abandoned aircraft programmes there. Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have variously been in talks over the past five or six years with Airbus, ATR, Boeing, British Aerospace, Fokker and McDonnell Douglas, leaving virtually no combination untested.
China alone has been involved in at least half a dozen negotiations with Western manufacturers. Boeing had a false start with its NSA regional jet, attempting to construct an unlikely alliance between China, Japan and others. Airbus eventually took over the European challenge, emerging victorious with the AE31X, in concert with Singapore.
The only programme that has seen light of day is the mid-1980s deal signed by MDC for assembly of the MD-80 and MD-90 (TrunkLiner). Ultimately it has outlasted MDC and the parent MD-80/90 programme.
All of which leaves the question of why the attempts have continued. It is clear enough what the Western manufacturers hoped to gain from the region - new markets, new money or both. The approaches from BAe, Fokker, MDC and the rest were essentially motivated by the need to find investment which Western manufacturers did not have or could not justify. For Airbus and Boeing the issue has been one of opening up lucrative new markets for their core airliner ranges. Significantly, Boeing's NSA bid was led by its marketing department and the group never did much to hide the fact that the project had more to do with support for sales campaigns than any real desire for a 100-seat airliner.
For Asian countries, the lure of such projects appears to have been a political ambition to gain a foothold in the civil aerospace sector, with its high technology jobs, added value and potential crossovers into defence technology. There is nothing wrong with such ambitions, but there is everything wrong with the way that they have been pursued.
As one weary Western aerospace executive says, the projects have had too much to do with political ambition and national pride, but too little to do with economic or industrial logic. Governments in countries like China quite reasonably assume that the best way to get started in civil aerospace is to begin with a small aircraft, possibly a Western cast-off, and gain experience to move on to bigger things. After all, this is, more or less, how Japan and others forged their way into the world automotive market. But while building a shiny domestic bubble car may one day lead to a Mercedes, the same arguments do not apply to aerospace. Starting off with a regional jet gives absolutely no guarantee of ending up with a jumbo jet or an advanced strike fighter.
Few Western manufacturers, however efficient, have been able to justify the business case for investing in a new 100-seat regional jet. South-East Asia, which itself has a relatively small requirement for such aircraft, is no more likely to make the economics work.
Neither should Asian governments be seduced by the prestige of being able to pin a national badge on some shiny new aircraft. There may be strategic defence reasons to swallow the cost of local military aircraft programmes. That does not apply to civil markets. The hard reality is that final assembly, for all the prestige it may bring, is a difficult and often thankless task representing perhaps no more than 10% of the average aircraft and, if done inefficiently, almost zero profit. Neither does the world need more civil assemblers.
Asia should pursue its ambitions in the aerospace industry, but through building up more useful capabilities in areas such as electronics and materials technology where it has an abundance of experience and an enviable track record.
Source: Flight International