Summary
- Air China receives 29th ARJ21 aircraft, becoming the operator with the largest fleet, for now.
- COMAC has delivered 142 ARJ21 aircraft across 12 customers in China and abroad.
- ARJ21 program could face overcapacity issues by the end of 2025 without new orders or customers.
Last Thursday, COMAC delivered its 29th ARJ21 aircraft (registration number: B-656L) to Air China. With this delivery, Air China’s ARJ21 fleet temporarily surpassed that of Chengdu Airlines and China Southern Airlines, making it the airline with the largest ARJ21 fleet.
Since COMAC delivered the first ARJ21 to Chengdu Airlines on November 29, 2015, Chengdu Airlines, as the launch customer for the ARJ21, has been the airline with the largest ARJ21 fleet for nearly nine years.
Photo: Comac
According to Flightradar data, the B-656L aircraft was put into operation by Air China’s Southwestern Branch yesterday, the fourth day after its delivery. It operated a route from its base in Chengdu to Quzhou, a city in western Zhejiang Province, with a total flight time of 4 hours and 32 minutes. Today (the 20th), it operated a route from Chengdu to Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei Province, with a total flight time of 4 hours and 28 minutes.
Airlines operating the ARJ21
COMAC has delivered 142 ARJ21 aircraft so far. According to statistics from Simple Flying, these 142 aircraft are distributed among 12 customers, including 11 in China and 1 outside China; 10 are engaged in passenger transport, and 2 are used for cargo transport. Among the 12 customers is COMAC’s wholly-owned subsidiary, COMAC Express.
Out of the 142 delivered aircraft, COMAC has recovered 9 aircraft from those early deliveries to Chengdu Airlines. Of these 9 aircraft, 5 remain under COMAC’s ownership and are used for testing various derivative models of the ARJ21; 2 have been transferred to COMAC Express for pilot training and accumulating flight hours; and 2 have been converted to freighters and delivered to two Chinese cargo airlines.
|
ARJ21 Operators |
Number of ARJ21 owned |
|
|---|---|---|
|
Passenger Airlines |
Air China |
29 |
|
Chengdu Airlines |
28 |
|
|
China Southern Airlines |
28 |
|
|
OTT Airlines (wholly owned by China Eastern Airlines) |
24 |
|
|
China Express |
8 |
|
|
Genghis Khan Airlines |
6 |
|
|
Jiangxi Air |
5 |
|
|
TransNusa Airlines |
3 |
|
|
China Flight General Aviation |
2 |
|
|
Cargo Airlines |
Air Central |
1 |
|
YTO Cargo Airlines |
1 |
|
|
Comac-owned Operator |
COMAC Flight Test Center |
5 |
|
COMAC Express |
2 |
|
|
142 |
||
Therefore, in terms of delivery experience, Chengdu Airlines is still the most experienced airline in receiving ARJ21 aircraft, having received a total of 37 ARJ21 aircraft from COMAC, including the 28 currently in its fleet.
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The potential overcapacity of ARJ21 production next year
According to publicly available information from COMAC, China’s Big Three (Air China, China Eastern Airlines, and China Southern Airlines) each ordered 35 ARJ21 aircraft from COMAC in 2019. These 105 orders are also the most important support for the ARJ21 project.
On June 28, 2020, China’s Big Three simultaneously received their first ARJ21 aircraft from COMAC at its Pudong base. This day was a milestone for both COMAC and the three major airlines.
Photo: Comac
According to the delivery schedule, the Big Three will complete their respective deliveries of 35 ARJ21 aircraft next year. Eventually, the three will also tie as the airlines with the largest ARJ21 fleets—unless Chengdu Airlines places additional orders.
Chengdu Airlines signed a 30-aircraft order for the ARJ21 in 2015, which was the launch order for the ARJ21. Currently, only 2 aircraft remain to fulfill this order. Whether Chengdu Airlines will place additional orders with COMAC has yet to be confirmed.
However, if the Big Three and Chengdu Airlines complete their orders next year and do not place new orders for the ARJ21, the ARJ21 program will face serious overcapacity. By the second half of next year at the latest, if there are no new ARJ21 orders, the ARJ21 aircraft coming off the production line will have to be parked on the apron.
Photo: Comac
Given the current production capacity of approximately 30-50 ARJ21 aircraft per year, if no new orders or customers are secured within a year, it is estimated that by the end of 2025, around 20-30 ARJ21 aircraft will face the embarrassing situation of being rolled out with no customers for delivery.
Of course, as Chengdu Airlines continues to mature its operations in the Xinjiang region and surrounding countries, and with the support of the three major airlines for China’s regional aviation strategy, the ARJ21 project may receive new orders, potentially preventing such overcapacity from occurring.
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