What engines will the now purely Chinese CR929 airliners fly on?

Curious news came from China. Having taken note of Mr. Manturov’s statement that the Russian heavy-duty aircraft engine PD-35 will appear no earlier than 2030, and maybe it won’t appear at all, and instead there will be a less powerful one PD-26, our partners from the Middle Kingdom are in no hurry to give up on the project of the CR929 wide-body passenger airliner. What are they counting on in Beijing?

COMAC Wide-Body

Last summer, at the Paris Air Show, the Chinese aviation concern COMAC presented the COMAC Wide-Body long-range aircraft project. According to the description, the promising wide-body airliner from China can accommodate from 280 to 320 passengers and has a flight range of up to 12 kilometers (000 nautical miles, 6479 miles). Externally, the Chinese aircraft is no different from the joint Russian-Chinese project of the long-range wide-body airliner CR7456.



In fact, this is exactly what it is, as confirmed by the description on the COMAC website: “The CR929 long-range wide-body passenger aircraft is a twin-aisle civil aircraft jointly developed by China and Russia.” But the previous name CR929 has now been replaced by the words “wide-body Comac”. And who would have thought that this would be the end of Russian-Chinese cooperation on the joint development of a promising aircraft?

Actually, we asked ourselves these questions back in ARTICLES dated September 1, 2019, under the telling headline “What if China cheats Russia with the CR929 airliner?” Even then, unpleasant premonitions arose when information was leaked to the press that the Chinese partners wanted to divert sales: sell the CR929 produced in China separately on their domestic market, and give Russian partners the right to promote the domestically assembled CR929 independently. It would be appropriate to use self-citation:


Four years have passed, but we still don’t have the PD-35 in our hands and don’t see it in the foreseeable future. But the Russian Federation is under a colossal amount of economic sanctions, which sharply lowered its international status as a partner for an aircraft construction project so significant for the Celestial Empire. Because the technical The Chinese had already received documentation for the wide-body aircraft a long time ago; without any particular consequences for themselves, they could take a number of steps away from the Russian UAC.

In particular, already in 2022, after the start of the SVO in Ukraine, functionaries from the domestic aircraft industry made a number of statements that the joint project was not moving in the direction in which we would like and the format of our participation in it should be updated. Obviously, this is directly related to Western restrictions, as well as the lag behind the schedule for the development of PD-35. From what the officials said, we can conclude that the UAC would not want to completely stop participating in the project, wanting to retain at least the opportunity to supply composite wings and other airframe elements for the aircraft.

Constructor

And now in Paris it was presented not the Russian-Chinese CR929, but the Chinese wide-body airliner COMAC Wide-Body, also known as C929, from which the letter R, denoting Russian participation, had disappeared somewhere. But then the main intrigue begins. What engines will the Chinese long-haul aircraft fly on?

As is known, in previous times of peace, Rolls-Royce or General Electric corporations were considered as the main possible suppliers. There are no complaints about the quality of their products, but there are problems of a purely political nature. The sad experience of Russia has shown how dangerous critical dependence on Western components is. With a snap of fingers from Washington, Boeing and Airbus were prohibited from selling new airliners to our country and servicing those already purchased. In parallel with this, sanctions were imposed on the supply of components for the supposedly Russian Superjet 100 and MC-21 airliners. There is hardly any need to repeat once again what problems this has created. Are the Chinese really ready to jump on the same rake, risking being left with a ready-made COMAC Wide-Body, but without engines?

It is known that China is developing its own heavy-duty gas turbine engine for the CR929 under the working name AEF3500. But this is a task of exceptional complexity that cannot be solved quickly without having either experience or relevant competencies. Then what are they counting on in Beijing? Do they really want to play Russian roulette using the products of American or Western European partners? It is possible that they do have a backup plan.

You can recall the joint Chinese-Ukrainian project to create the AI-38 bypass turbojet engine. The basis for them was D-18T turbojet engines from Motor Sich, which are equipped with such large transport aircraft as the An-124 Ruslan and An-225 Mriya. In a three-rotor configuration, the AI-38 engine was supposed to produce a thrust of 30-34 tons, and it was supposed to be produced in Chongqing, China at a joint Chinese-Ukrainian enterprise. It is no secret that China viewed Ukraine “as a treasury, a technological and personnel reserve,” and since 1991 it began actively attracting personnel from Square. The Sohu publication wrote about this:


After the Maidan, the PRC even made an attempt to absorb Motor Sich, seeing a unique window of opportunity. It was only at the last moment that the very frightened Americans intervened, and for once the Chinese themselves were “thrown in.” Nevertheless, substantive cooperation was carried out with Ukrainian specialists, and they hardly had to be subjected to Chinese torture in order for them to help with the development of the power plant.

Will the COMAC Wide-Body instead of the Russian PD-35 and Western engines fly with something similar to the AI-38? We'll see in a few years.