COMAC's production bottleneck
China's COMAC faces hard limits in scaling C919 jet production despite political ambition. An industry analysis says that even if Chinese airlines take 33 C919s in 2026, that still only equates to about two-to-three jets per month because of risks around LEAP‑1C engines and export constraints. The takeaway is that aerospace ambitions run headlong into supply‑chain and certification chokepoints that industrial policy alone can't erase. (airinsight.com)
China wants the COMAC C919 to be its answer to the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320, but the near-term math still looks tiny: one industry analysis says 33 deliveries in 2026 would only mean about two to three jets a month. That is factory output on the scale of a boutique line, not a global challenger. (airinsight.com) The surprise is that the bottleneck is not demand inside China. The bottleneck is whether COMAC can keep getting enough parts, especially the LEAP-1C engines built by CFM International, the joint venture of GE Aerospace and Safran. (airinsight.com, iba.aero) A modern jet is less like a car and more like a chain of thousands of locked doors. If one supplier misses one critical item, the whole airplane can sit unfinished on the floor. (airinsight.com) That is exactly what hit COMAC in 2025, when reports said its C919 target was cut from 75 aircraft to 25 because supply-chain problems and geopolitics disrupted access to key components. A threefold cut in one year tells you the assembly line is still fragile. (ch-aviation.com, airinsight.com) The biggest single weak point is the engine. In mid-2025, the United States paused some export licenses for aviation equipment to China, including the LEAP-1C used on the C919, before exports later resumed in July 2025. (aiaa.org, iba.aero) That episode mattered because engines are not interchangeable like tires. The C919 was designed around the LEAP-1C, so any interruption in that flow can slow deliveries even if the fuselage, wings, and cabin are ready. (airinsight.com, airinsight.com) COMAC has talked for years about replacing foreign parts with Chinese ones, but engines are the hardest part of a commercial jet to localize. They have to deliver fuel burn, durability, and safety over thousands of cycles, and they also have to be certified for airline use. (airinsight.com, airinsight.com) Certification is the second choke point. The C919 received Chinese type certification on September 29, 2022, and entered commercial service with China Eastern on May 28, 2023, but European approval is still years away. (wikipedia.org, airlinegeeks.com, ch-aviation.com) In April 2025, European Union Aviation Safety Agency chief Florian Guillermet said the aircraft could not be certified in Europe in 2025, and reports said the process would likely take until at least 2028. That keeps the C919 mostly inside China’s domestic system for now. (ch-aviation.com, avitrader.com) So the real story is not whether China can build an airliner at all. It already has one flying passengers. The story is that scaling from a national project into a true Boeing-Airbus rival means mastering the dullest parts of aerospace: engines, avionics, supplier timing, and foreign certification paperwork. (airlinegeeks.com, airinsight.com, aviationtoday.com) Until those bottlenecks loosen, even a headline number like 33 jets in 2026 still describes a program moving at a few planes per month. In commercial aviation, that is proof of arrival, but not yet proof of scale. (airinsight.com, iba.aero)
