A very interesting article on the widebody issue (I did not report here the translation of the part about the chinese needs and goal, please see it directly in the link below).
The only question here is why (according to the author) should the development of a 2 engine version of the il96 will be so much expensive that it will be a problem for Russia....
It cannot be compared with the development cost of the A380, that was much bigger than anything built by airbus before.
https://aviation21.ru/cr929-zachem-etot-samolyot-nuzhen-kitayu-i-zachem-rossii/
CR929 - why does China need this plane and why Russia
Published by 10/18/2020, 11:09 PM |
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Russia's goals:
1. Possibility to share the costs of developing the SHFDMS.
2. Get a capacious Chinese air passenger market.
3. Eliminate the transfer of key technologies to Beijing.
Currently, work is underway in Russia to resume production of the Il-96-400M. This liner should be viewed as a transitional aircraft until the CR929 appears. The Il-96-400M is unable to fully compete with the B787, A330neo or A350 aircraft. A four-engine aircraft of comparable passenger capacity will always lose in economic efficiency to a two-engine liner, especially if a four-engine aircraft is equipped with a power plant of the previous generation.
According to the chief designer of CR929 from the Russian side, Maxim Litvinov, in the next 20 years, the Russian market for SHFDMS will comprise 50 aircraft, and the Chinese market - 450-500 aircraft. KLA sees Russia's need for wide-body aircraft until 2037 in the amount of 140 aircraft, of which 63 airliners belong to the group of up to 300 seats. The demand of Chinese airlines for ShF aircraft is 9 times more and amounts to 1,260 airliners.
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Russia can independently develop such an aircraft, but selling even 200-300 aircraft of this type is not a real task. First of all, due to the lack of demand for such quantities of SHFDMS in the domestic market. Secondly, in order to sell such machines abroad, very broad cooperation with foreign suppliers is required. But in the context of incessant sanctions and the refusal of foreign "partners" to work with Russian high-tech companies both under current and future contracts, this is completely unpromising. Loyal countries will buy cars with only Russian components, but such countries, as a rule, need single-piece wide-body aircraft. Therefore, it is advisable to divide on an equal footing the cost of developing a promising liner, while agreeing, that the final assembly will be carried out in Shanghai, leaving behind the design, testing and production of the most complex part of the airframe - the PKM wing. And no matter how selfish it sounds, a partner in the person of China, having a very capacious market, will provide both countries with a return on the development costs of the aircraft.
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Russia can independently develop such an aircraft, but selling even 200-300 aircraft of this type is not a real task. First of all, due to the lack of demand for such quantities of SHFDMS in the domestic market. Secondly, in order to sell such machines abroad, very broad cooperation with foreign suppliers is required. But in the context of incessant sanctions and the refusal of foreign "partners" to work with Russian high-tech companies both under current and future contracts, this is completely unpromising. Loyal countries will buy cars with only Russian components, but such countries, as a rule, need single-piece wide-body aircraft. Therefore, it is advisable to divide on an equal footing the cost of developing a promising liner, while agreeing, that the final assembly will be carried out in Shanghai, leaving behind the design, testing and production of the most complex part of the airframe - the PKM wing. And no matter how selfish it sounds, a partner in the person of China, having a very capacious market, will provide both countries with a return on the development costs of the aircraft.
Participation in the CR929 joint project does not imply the transfer of key technologies to Beijing. Because of this, certain circles in the PRC consider Russia not a very good partner. Basically, we are not trying to be "white and fluffy" for everyone. Naturally, China wants to get everything at once for its money invested in the development of the liner. But it doesn't work that way. India also demanded to share the key technologies of the Su-57 (PAK FA, FGFA), Russia did not agree to this, and the fifth generation fighter for Delhi is not visible even in the long term. Therefore, the "epithets" about "bad and petty partners", which are given in the publicationGuanzha, we will consider a manifestation of small human weaknesses.
Thus, both countries want to develop their own wide-body passenger aircraft, and the joint development could reduce costs and expand the original customer base. But Beijing, given the inability to independently build a modern wide-body airliner and the capacity of its market for passenger air transportation, is vitally interested in the CR929 project. At the same time, Russia should not selfishly use China's technological dependence in this area, but participate in the joint project as widely as possible.