China's Comac is serious competitor but must bring something new, Airbus says

China's plane maker Comac is a "serious competitor" to the industry's duopoly of Airbus and Boeing, but the state-owned company has yet to differentiate its narrow-body jets from the current offerings in the market, a senior Airbus executive said. There is enough sustained demand for aircraft, particularly in China, to offer ample opportunities for all the plane makers currently operating in the market, Christian Scherer, Airbus's chief of the commercial planes unit, said in London on Sunday before the Farnborough airshow. "We do take Comac as a serious competitor," Scherer said. "It's not when or if. They are a competitor. So far they are very much influential in the PRC (People's Republic of China) and perhaps in surrounding areas or countries. There is significant sustained demand, not just in China, but in particular within China, for that cake to grow and to be split up and still offer vast opportunities to all contenders, Airbus included." State-owned Comac also has succeeded in bringing its airplanes to market and they are flying, albeit at small volumes to start with, he said. But the Shanghai-based company has yet to offer a product other than the narrow-body aircraft already available in the market, such as the Airbus A320 or A321 family of jets. "Comac has not really brought anything new of differentiating substance to the market," Scherer said, comparing the C919 narrow-body with its own existing single-aisle jets. "When Airbus started with the same legitimacy of trying to establish technological sovereignty here in Europe for commercial aviation, Airbus did not imitate a product that was at that time delivered exclusively by the US. We brought something new to the market and that has helped us accelerate our market penetration."<br/>