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Comment by bigethan | Hacker News Reader

"The lack of certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is seen as a major hindrance for international sales."

no kidding.

China's current reputation (fast and default to crappy quality without extreme oversight) doesn't really fit what I'd want out of an airliner. Optimistically, this project succeeds and changes a bit of the culture around quality and shortcuts in manufacturing. If "Made in China" could gain some equivalence to "Made in Germany" without exploding their cost structure. That'd be an interesting world.

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According to this:

* http://aviationweek.com/awin/c919-may-be-largely-limited-chi...

... that is a bit misleading. The C919 is not pursuing FAA certification directly. Instead an attempt is being made to have the Chinese certification be recognized by the FAA. The article points out that in 2013 that process was not going well.

Also from the article:

>There is no suggestion the CAAC would be soft on Comac; on the contrary, it is repeatedly reported that the Chinese authority is tougher than the FAA.

So chances are that there are no serious gotchas here and that this will all come down to paperwork.

> Instead an attempt is being made to have the Chinese certification be recognized by the FAA.

That has about as much chance of happening as a Chinese plane has of getting FAA certification.

Politics are wound up as tightly in this as a tapeworm.

> it is repeatedly reported that the Chinese authority is tougher than the FAA.

Except their government and regulatory structures are much, much more corrupt than their Western counterparts. Sure, they'll produce a document that'll say its safe but whats in the air is a totally different story. The same way lead-free products from China are full of lead. Everyone I know who resells from alibaba does lead testing on their own for every bulk shipment to avoid this. The problem is that bad. Then you have poison in baby formula, USB chargers that catch fire, and the slew of other concerning things that come out of China regularly.

So yeah, maybe the FAA should be a little skeptical of a certification from a corrupt one-party state eager to make its mark on the world as being competitive with the West and taking every shortcut to get there.

Depends. China have a lot of quality production. But they are producing cheap and crappy because that is what the world buys. They have the means to produce at whatever part of the price/quality curve you want.

Not to speak of the aircraft technology / engineering work they're buying from European suppliers. One of my colleagues in France works mainly for Chinese manufacturers.

Well "Made in Germany" brand took on a hammering, the only other country manufacturing planes en masse is Russia, but their plane safety record speaks for itself.

It will be a steep hill for China to climb, the question really is how much technology and knowhow was "appropriated"

Cheap toys and phones is one thing, planes are another

Brasil is another country that makes commercial planes. They (and Canada) are much bigger internationally then Russia. And they are pretty successful with Embraer even though they did not have any prior reputation.

There are two major aerospace companies, neither of which is German. Boeing is from the US and Airbus is from France.

Civilian aircraft production in Russia is practically non-existent.

Airbus is based in France, but it's actually an European consortium, with manufacturing facilities across the continent (and in China).

China just bought 130 Airbus from Germany: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34665546

"Airbus has headquarters in Germany and France."

The irony is that VWs are actually made in Mexico.

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