Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "How the USA Is Losing the Aviation Industry Battle" video.

  1. What's important is the QA in the process, which have to abide by strict international standards and not Chinese corner-cutting because Chinese airlines are flying Airbus and Boeing airframes overseas (including back to the EU and US).
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  2. Sadly the way the A380 was designed it won't have much of a second life as an airfreighter either: the top deck can't be removed to make space for lucrative oversize cargo, the cockpit is in the way of a nose door, and it doesn't have the thrust/weight ratio needed to take advantage of all that space before reaching MTOW. Being designed for passengers first it's impractical to retrofit, much like trying to turn apartments into a warehouse or a cruise liner into a container carrier. Part of the genius behind the 747 was that it's actually a cargo plane with seats bolted on, as the engineers had doubts for its success carrying only passengers. I can see the A380 possibly becoming a hybrid where the middle deck can get loaded with ULDs, with passengers only on the top deck. It will be a rare conversion though, as pretty much every other airframe will end up in a boneyard to part out to the few airlines and routes that have economical usage for the superjumbo.
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  3. The C919 is smaller, shorter-ranged, and less fuel efficient, making it a tough sell for airlines that plan to fly it over the next 20~30 years. That's on top of being like 60% imported American parts. COMAC has a long way to go to hope to be the next Embrear let alone an Airbus or Boeing, especially with China's economy itself stalling from aging, debt, pollution, and global divestment.
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