Henry Neiberlien/Editor-In-Chief

For almost thirty years the commercial airline industry has been completely dominated by two main companies, Airbus and Boeing.

Once upon a time, there were many different companies all manufacturing airliners in a crowded market.

One by one, companies like McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed were either bought by their competitors or decided to leave the market entirely.

In a world dominated by a single American and a single European manufacturer, new players are trying to enter the game both for better and for worse.

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was a major manufacturer of airliners for the Eastern Bloc and Aeroflot, the Russian state-owned airline.

Nowadays, Aeroflot only flies Boeing and Airbus aircraft for revenue flights and only operates domestically-made aircraft for government work.

Russia is now re-entering the airline industry, and for the first time, they have broken out of the eastern world and into the west.

Airbus and Boeing do not have aircraft that compete for the regional 100-seat airline market, and this has left room for companies like Embraer, Mitsubishi and Bombardier to enter. Russia has already entered this market with the Sukhoi Superjet-100.

This aircraft can be seen in the British Isles flying for the Irish airline CityJet.

Russia is not stopping at the regional jet and is trying to compete against the A320 with their new MC-21 which is slated to enter service in 2019 with Aeroflot. This marks the return of domestically-produced aircraft to the fleet. With the current geopolitical climate and the lack of support structure outside of Russia, support for this aircraft in the western world is nonexistent.

China is trying its hand in the airliner market, and they have been less than successful.

Russia has had a strong aircraft industry since the early twentieth century, but China is still building one in a desperate attempt to be globally competitive.

While China builds almost everything, commercial aircraft has been a major struggle for them. Their first attempt was a regional jet called the ARJ21, a copy of the MD-90.

The ARJ21 program started in 2002 and did not achieve its first flight until 2008, and today they are still struggling to manufacture the aircraft as only four have been built and delivered to customers.

This has been due to the poor reliability of the aircraft and the fact that China still does not manufacture a reliable and powerful turbine engine, forcing Chinese manufacturers to rely on Russian and American built engines.

China’s most recent attempt at an airliner, the C919, has had problems of its own. The C919 is China’s version of Bombardier’s CS100 mixed with the Airbus A320neo.

Launched in 2008, it did not achieve its first flight until this past May. Only two aircraft have been built, and they also are powered by the CFM International LEAP engine, which has had its share of problems on the A320neo.

While deliveries of the C919 have been pushed into 2020, China and Russia have started a joint wide-body airliner project called the C929.

However, given how unsuccessful the C919 has been in meeting its milestones and delivery dates and how the expected wide-scale delivery date for the aircraft is in early 2033, the project is still in the concept stage. There are currently no firm orders by any airline.

Deliveries were initially expected in 2015 and have been pushed back half a decade.

Research into the programs by Russian and Chinese companies to break into international airline market have revealed that they might be more political than commercial in nature.

Russia and China are both eager to stop relying on the west for a majority of their aircraft fleets and to develop industries of their own.

Unfortunately for both countries, the international airline community is comfortable ordering from reliable manufacturers, and major airlines are not willing to take a risk by ordering from an unknown and unproven Chinese or Russian manufacturer.

That does not mean these aircraft will be unsuccessful, as government owned airlines from both China and Russia will be “encouraged” to order them.

The western market will probably continue as the support structure, with leasing options and spare parts. The used aircraft market is filled with Boeing and Airbus aircraft that are both economical and trusted by the rest of the world.