With the launch of parts manufacturing last summer, the Sino-Russian CR929 widebody twin began the long journey towards certification. Managed by the China-Russia Commercial Aircraft International Corporation (CRAIC), the project expects final assembly to take place in Shanghai. But a lot has changed since the company was founded in May 2017 as a 50/50 joint venture between China’s Comac and Russia’s UAC. The Covid 19 pandemic, a cooling of East-West relations and design complexities all combined to force a delay to the original schedule.

The partners have postponed the first flight from 2023 to 2025, but even the most recent goal seems unrealistic without Western will and power. Neither China nor Russia has developed a suitable engine in the required thrust class, at 77,000 pounds. The AECC CJ-2000 project to produce such an engine using Ukrainian technologies fell through after the Kiev government vetoed a previously agreed sale of engine maker Motor-Sich to a Chinese investor.

For its part, Russia has had some success in designing and testing the PD-35 turbojet engine, the result of an effort led by United Engine Corporation member Aviadvigatel. The company’s CEO and general designer, Alexander Inozemtsev, hopes to complete development of the PD-35 in 2025 and begin mass production in 2028, about five years later than the CRAIC had planned to introduce the aircraft.

Should the White House prohibit General Electric from supplying the GEnx-1B76 and Downing Street the same with Rolls-Royce and the Trent 1000, further delays in the aircraft program seem inevitable. Of course, this would be a severe blow to a project in which the two partner countries have committed to invest some 20 billion dollars to cover R&D, production preparation and after-sales support. The developers forecast a 20-year demand for the CR929 class of aircraft from Chinese airlines of 1,200 units and Russian carriers from 50 to 120. The CRAIC hopes to generate at least 800 sales over a 20-year period, provided that shipments begin in 2026 or 2027 and commercial operations in 2028 or 2029.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said his government would provide an additional 44.6 billion rubles ($583 million) for the development of the PD-35 in 2022. The decision was made in December after the successful start of tests on a experimental engine core. After initial trials that lasted about six months, until October, the basic PD-35 demonstrator was transferred to the Central Institute of Aviation Engines for the next phase. Engineers placed it in a test rig that provides heated airflow, similar to that generated by the fan and low-pressure compressor.

In parallel, the industry has started producing experimental examples of key parts in advanced composite materials, including fan blades, using prepreg and 3D threading technologies.

Aviadvigatel hopes to finalize the shape of the PD-35 blades later this year. The CRAIC plans to use composites for parts of the CR929 wing, according to Anatoly Gaidansky, first deputy director of Irkut Corporation, which is responsible for civil aviation in the United Aircraft (UAC) corporate structure. In November, he said the Russian company Aerocomposite had started manufacturing examples of composite parts for the CR929 airframe. The milestone follows the release last September of China’s Civil Aviation Development Plan for 2021-2025, which indicates that assembly work on the first CR929 prototype has begun.

This summer, the Russian government plans to decide on further development plans for the PD-35. The basic version comes with a 3.1 meter fan, weighs 8 tons and develops a thrust of approximately 77,000 pounds. It would form the basis of a family of engines in the thrust range between 53,000 and 110,000 pounds. Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov said the decision will depend on whether plans for new indigenous cargo ships and military transport aircraft go ahead. In particular, the Ministry of Defense still has to decide on some issues relating to the Perspective aviation complex of military transport aviation, a possible successor to the cargo carrier Antonov An-124 Ruslan. “We have been conducting an R&D program on PD-35 since 2018,” Manturov said. Plans call for the completion of initial testing of the engines’ gas generator in 2022 and a freeze on its final configuration in 2023. Depending on the performance it delivers, the Russian government will decide which way to go for the engine family.

Manturov hopes the base PD-35 will become the engine of choice for future CR929 operators, while hinting that decisions on the engine family could affect the Sino-Russian program in several ways. The base model of the aircraft, the CR929-600, weighs 540,000 pounds and carries 280 passengers over 6,480 nautical miles, figures for which the designers optimized the PD-35. The latter also fits a future twin-engine version of the Ilyushin Il-96 quad still in low-rate production under orders from the Russian government. At the same time, the CRAIC announced plans for a shrunken CR929-500 with seating for 230 passengers and a stretched CR929-700 with seating for 320, but their ultimate existence hinges on the upcoming engine decision.

An ambitious and far-reaching program, the CR929 is important for Moscow and Beijing, as both seek technological independence from the West. In 2014, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping attended the signing ceremony between UAC and Comac which sealed a framework agreement to cooperate on future widebody transport. Both leaders could tolerate project delays, but not failure, raising hopes in their respective countries that the CR929 will leave its mark on aviation history.