ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Zoedyn · Mon Sep 17, 2018 1:19 am

http://www.ecns.cn/m/business/2018-09-1 ... 0678.shtml

HNA and COMAC signed an MoU on Friday Sept 14th

Key takeaways:

• HNA to deploy ARJ21s in African countries through its global airline network and partnerships with African airliners such as the Ghana-based AWA

• HNA and COMAC to assist African countries in building regional airline networks with cooperation in areas like aircraft maintenance, aviation materials supply and personnel training, with an eye to establishing a jet leasing company in Africa to support sales of China’s domestically made planes

Surely this counts as a vital strategy for COMAC to win international recognition for its budding ARJ21s through strategic cooperation with the internationally well-heeled HNA

Intriguing to see how far the strategy and cooperation would move forward into the future

louA340 · Tue Sep 18, 2018 1:08 am

When they say deploy, do they mean HNA is purchasing the aircraft's and then sending them to their subsidiaries as something like a dry lease? I've not seen anywhere that AWA have shown interest in the ARJ21, I've rather heard rumours about the E190's to keep commonality with their ERJ145's

lightsaber · Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:39 am

Zoedyn wrote:
Surely this counts as a vital strategy for COMAC to win international recognition for its budding ARJ21s through strategic cooperation with the internationally well-heeled HNA

Well healed? HNA is the largest effective bankruptcy I'm aware of. For a mega rescue, for them going down would have brought the Chinese economy down, they promised to buy ARJ21s and C919s.

First the ARJ21 needs to develop a reputation for reliability.

Then they need to publish economics. As far as I can tell, they are competing with used E-175s and CRJ7/9s.

What they need is a product to compete with the E2s. Only the USA has scope clause limiting MTOW.

Lightsaber

EBT · Tue Sep 18, 2018 7:05 am

It's all about HNA currying favour with Beijing and getting them to release some of the controls that banks have put on lending to HNA. Sure, AWA may take some ARJ21s, as will African government that are under pressure to or have them gifted to them. But that won't make it a commercial success. Long ago Comac effectively wrote off the ARJ21 as a pathway to building the C919, so they're not interested in building a regional jet that will take on the E2 and MRJ, and any sales will continue to be politically motivated.

oldannyboy · Tue Sep 18, 2018 9:13 am

Ohhh, I can so see some sun-baked ARJ-21s with faded titles gathering dust in some remote and forgotten corner of some African airport in a few short years from now... they will make for an interesting and exotic subject for photographers!
caption under the photo will read " this rare Chinese survivor with the faded colors of long-forgotten operator AWA has been sitting idly next to the storage ramp for a few years awaiting to meet its fate"

WorldFlier · Tue Sep 18, 2018 1:23 pm

lightsaber wrote:
Zoedyn wrote:
Surely this counts as a vital strategy for COMAC to win international recognition for its budding ARJ21s through strategic cooperation with the internationally well-heeled HNA

Well healed? HNA is the largest effective bankruptcy I'm aware of. For a mega rescue, for them going down would have brought the Chinese economy down, they promised to buy ARJ21s and C919s.

First the ARJ21 needs to develop a reputation for reliability.

Then they need to publish economics. As far as I can tell, they are competing with used E-175s and CRJ7/9s.

What they need is a product to compete with the E2s. Only the USA has scope clause limiting MTOW.

Lightsaber

HNA was never going to be allowed to go bankrupt. This deal shows the strings the Chinese shadow-bailout came with.

Let's please not use hyperbole, HNA would not bring down the Chinese economy no more than say one of the US Big 3 would bring it down. This is a tertiary business that would hurt, but not a primary producer like Boeing or GM that would bring down a lot of secondary suppliers with them.

If there was room in the market, someone would fill their gap.

zkojq · Tue Sep 18, 2018 1:27 pm

This won't end well at all.

raylee67 · Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:19 pm

Wait till COMAC can actually deliver the aircraft and we can worry about the rest. If I am not mistaken, COMAC has delivered like 6 ARJs? At the current rate, even if the deal is real and genuine, we will need to wait 150 years for the this order to be delivered (assuming the existing 300+ orders are all real and this one comes after those)

Flighty · Tue Sep 18, 2018 3:01 pm

oldannyboy wrote:
Ohhh, I can so see some sun-baked ARJ-21s with faded titles gathering dust in some remote and forgotten corner of some African airport in a few short years from now... they will make for an interesting and exotic subject for photographers!
caption under the photo will read " this rare Chinese survivor with the faded colors of long-forgotten operator AWA has been sitting idly next to the storage ramp for a few years awaiting to meet its fate"

Retired safely at an airport? Wheels on the ground? You are an optimist!

lightsaber · Tue Sep 18, 2018 3:41 pm

WorldFlier wrote:
lightsaber wrote:
Zoedyn wrote:
Surely this counts as a vital strategy for COMAC to win international recognition for its budding ARJ21s through strategic cooperation with the internationally well-heeled HNA

Well healed? HNA is the largest effective bankruptcy I'm aware of. For a mega rescue, for them going down would have brought the Chinese economy down, they promised to buy ARJ21s and C919s.

First the ARJ21 needs to develop a reputation for reliability.

Then they need to publish economics. As far as I can tell, they are competing with used E-175s and CRJ7/9s.

What they need is a product to compete with the E2s. Only the USA has scope clause limiting MTOW.

Lightsaber

HNA was never going to be allowed to go bankrupt. This deal shows the strings the Chinese shadow-bailout came with.

Let's please not use hyperbole, HNA would not bring down the Chinese economy no more than say one of the US Big 3 would bring it down. This is a tertiary business that would hurt, but not a primary producer like Boeing or GM that would bring down a lot of secondary suppliers with them.

If there was room in the market, someone would fill their gap.

I do believe if you are going to fail, be too big to fail. Big is the real estate holdings of HNA that are the financial risk to the entire Chinese economy. Yes, the aerospace side is Tertiary. We can agree on that. I was referring to the entire HNA.

So for a fortune in bailout, these go to Africa and will probably suffer the same fate as the MA-60.

As the Su-100 shows, supporting an aircraft in service is hard. All evidence is the 5 ARJ-21 in service fly as much as 1.5 E2-190. Ohhh.. not a good cost trade. Until COMAC can match Embraer and Bombardier support, they are a show project.

It should take 18 months to debug an Airframe after certification. But that is a few months at 98% dispatch reliability, the just 99% with high care and feeding, then normal, cost effective, opperations. The ARJ-21 has used up their time.

I do believe and HNA airline gao would be filled. But oh.. having to bet the company on unreliable planes is horrible.

I cannot wait for the parked in Africa photos. I hope the are of whole aircraft.

Chinese failures:
MA-60
MA-600
ARJ-21

Yes, I ignore the prior learning projects.
I'm very concerned for the C919.

Lightsaber

MaverickM11 · Tue Sep 18, 2018 3:46 pm

What did Africa World Airways do to deserve this??

oldannyboy wrote:
Ohhh, I can so see some sun-baked ARJ-21s with faded titles gathering dust in some remote and forgotten corner of some African airport in a few short years from now... they will make for an interesting and exotic subject for photographers!
caption under the photo will read " this rare Chinese survivor with the faded colors of long-forgotten operator AWA has been sitting idly next to the storage ramp for a few years awaiting to meet its fate"

keeping the L10 company off the runway in OUA... :rotfl:

c933103 · Tue Sep 18, 2018 3:48 pm

louA340 wrote:
When they say deploy, do they mean HNA is purchasing the aircraft's and then sending them to their subsidiaries as something like a dry lease? I've not seen anywhere that AWA have shown interest in the ARJ21, I've rather heard rumours about the E190's to keep commonality with their ERJ145's

The HNA group have previously signed MoU with Comac to take hundreds of ARJ21 and C919 (100 ARJ21 and 200 C919 if I recalled correctly), as part of the effort to make the central government of China help save the company. What they are now going to do now is to "assign" these aircrafts into various different airlines within the group so that they can actually sign these orders. This have nothing to do with whatever aircraft they might want to fly, but just that they think they would need to do this to gain the government's support to make the group stay afloat.

SpeckSpot · Tue Sep 18, 2018 4:02 pm

This may be a bit of a naive question but is the ARJ21 certified by the US FAA, the equivalent European Aviation Authority and Canadian Aviation Authority?

drdisque · Tue Sep 18, 2018 4:06 pm

The end result: By 2025 there will be about a dozen of abandoned ARJ21's littering the corners of various African airports.

tistpaa727 · Tue Sep 18, 2018 4:10 pm

[quote="MaverickM11"]What did Africa World Airways do to deserve this??

LOL - good question how they got selected for this.

This is all part of China's One Belt strategy and Africa is a very large piece of it. When you look at the money flowing from China to the African continent it is staggering. By helping the African countries build their infrastructure they gain a powerful hand in their politics and trade alliances.

The real proof here, as always, will be when these planes are delivered. Reading the announcement, I don't see any indication of when this will happen, just that it will (may: my edit) happen.

zakuivcustom · Tue Sep 18, 2018 4:11 pm

MaverickM11 wrote:
What did Africa World Airways do to deserve this??

B/c HNA is the majority owner of AWA? Also, b/c HNA Group knows that even Chinese doesn't exactly trust how "good" ARJ-21 is (Go read some of the comments on CARNOC or bbs.feeyo.com, the second being the Chinese a.net) that they send them to Africa? :duck:

. Not to mention, it fits right into Emperor Xi's "One Belt One Road" (aka spread Chinese influence everywhere), HNA showing how they can "follow the party's (CCP) policy", etc.

Ultimately, not too different from PRC more or less "donate" some MA-60s to Real Tonga. Sale them planes, gain influence in trades/economy, and also being able to "control" a huge sectors in a country eventually. The cronies/elites in Ghana win, Chinese win, your average Ghanaian lose. Ultimately, it's neocolonialism at its finest.

Zoedyn · Thu Sep 20, 2018 9:17 am

https://wenhui.whb.cn/third/yidian/2018 ... 11411.html

It seems COMAC and Ghana are being serious about their cooperation on the launch of ARJ21 operations in Africa, as per the Chinese story noticeably titled 这19个人中将诞生第一位国产ARJ21飞机“非洲机长”，其中一个还是女学员 First ARJ21 Captain from Africa Expected to Emerge Among These 19 Faces Including 1 Female Student

It says a total of 19 young Ghanaian students in their early twenties have recently taken a crash course on aviation at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in China's eastern Jiangsu Province. The courses they take include flight simulation, flight theory, radio communications, aviation English, etc

Those who excel at the courses will be sent to pilot training schools in South Africa for further nurturing, which means Ghana is most likely to produce and see its own first ARJ21 captain among this crop of cadets

This really makes perfect sense. Just wish those students the best of success in pursuing their dream to fly

offloaded · Thu Sep 20, 2018 9:57 am

Zoedyn wrote:
taken a crash course on aviation

Let's hope not.

:smile:

c933103 · Thu Sep 20, 2018 10:48 am

Zoedyn wrote:

https://wenhui.whb.cn/third/yidian/2018 ... 11411.html

It seems COMAC and Ghana are being serious about their cooperation on the launch of ARJ21 operations in Africa, as per the Chinese story noticeably titled 这19个人中将诞生第一位国产ARJ21飞机“非洲机长”，其中一个还是女学员 First ARJ21 Captain from Africa Expected to Emerge Among These 19 Faces Including 1 Female Student

It says a total of 19 young Ghanaian students in their early twenties have recently taken a crash course on aviation at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in China's eastern Jiangsu Province. The courses they take include flight simulation, flight theory, radio communications, aviation English, etc

Those who excel at the courses will be sent to pilot training schools in South Africa for further nurturing, which means Ghana is most likely to produce and see its own first ARJ21 captain among this crop of cadets

This really makes perfect sense. Just wish those students the best of success in pursuing their dream to fly

Sorry, but if you read the news in detail, what the news is saying is that:
1. The program the training they are going to receive is a short term one, with programs like "Flying Simulation, Flying Principle, Aviation English, and Telecommunication", just as you described
2. The 19 students are from Congo (Brazzaville) send in by Congo Airlines and they are not from Ghana
3. The reason why the article say those the first "made in China African pilot for ARJ21" might come out of them is because the airlines have also ordered three ARJ21.
It would be a very huge jump in logic, despite still connected, to say these indicate "First ARJ21 Captain from Africa Expected to Emerge Among These 19 Faces Including 1 Female Student"

KentB27 · Thu Sep 20, 2018 12:59 pm

I can't wait to see how this plays out. I'm sure the support and maintenance for these aircraft is next to nothing. Chengdu Airlines can barely even keep their small fleet of them flying.

lightsaber · Thu Sep 20, 2018 3:19 pm

KentB27:
Chengdu airlines is in the same corporate group, so they have resources to receive the best technical support. There are COMAC master mechanics on site. What is an airline thousands of miles away, with a language barrier, going to do?

Lightsaber

Spacepope · Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:08 pm

KentB27 wrote:
I can't wait to see how this plays out. I'm sure the support and maintenance for these aircraft is next to nothing. Chengdu Airlines can barely even keep their small fleet of them flying.

Well, if it's anything like the SSJ fiasco, they'll just blame the western engines and call everything else a conspiracy. Seems to be working well for Interjet.

vahancrazy · Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:12 pm

Flighty wrote:
oldannyboy wrote:
Ohhh, I can so see some sun-baked ARJ-21s with faded titles gathering dust in some remote and forgotten corner of some African airport in a few short years from now... they will make for an interesting and exotic subject for photographers!
caption under the photo will read " this rare Chinese survivor with the faded colors of long-forgotten operator AWA has been sitting idly next to the storage ramp for a few years awaiting to meet its fate"

Retired safely at an airport? Wheels on the ground? You are an optimist!

Not necessarily safely but sooner or later every airplane will be wheels on the ground..or at least not in the air

vahancrazy · Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:18 pm

Zoedyn wrote:
This really makes perfect sense. Just wish those students the best of success in pursuing their dream to fly

If unexperienced pilots will be directly captains of an unproven airplane, I wish them to stay alive until retirement!

lightsaber · Thu Sep 20, 2018 6:04 pm

vahancrazy wrote:
Flighty wrote:
oldannyboy wrote:
Ohhh, I can so see some sun-baked ARJ-21s with faded titles gathering dust in some remote and forgotten corner of some African airport in a few short years from now... they will make for an interesting and exotic subject for photographers!
caption under the photo will read " this rare Chinese survivor with the faded colors of long-forgotten operator AWA has been sitting idly next to the storage ramp for a few years awaiting to meet its fate"

Retired safely at an airport? Wheels on the ground? You are an optimist!

Not necessarily safely but sooner or later every airplane will be wheels on the ground..or at least not in the air

I fully expect gravity to keep working.

But on the ground and in the ground are two different situations.

I hope inexperienced pilots are not flying a troubled plane.

To others:
The SSJ analogy of blaming the engines probably will happen. I'm sure all of the current CF-34-10 opperators will worry.. not.

Engine externals are starved of cooling on the ARJ-21 to meet performance targets (e.g., valves on the engine). Western vendors refused to bid ...

Lightsaber

Erebus · Thu Sep 20, 2018 8:44 pm

lightsaber wrote:
I fully expect gravity to keep working.

But on the ground and in the ground are two different situations.

I hope inexperienced pilots are not flying a troubled plane.

They are said to be taking a 'crash course' in aviation according to a post above. I just hope that isn't to be taken too literally.

ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Re: ARJ21s to enter African market via Ghana’s Africa World Airlines as part of HNA-COMAC MoU

Who is online

Popular Searches On Airliners.net