As test flights loom, hard-sell begins

ICBC Financial Leasing Co, China's biggest financial leasing company, is to start promoting sales of the domestically built C919 airliner, the narrow-body aircraft being produced by Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China Ltd.

The first prototype of the C919, to be used for test flights, rolled off the assembly line in Shanghai on Nov 2 at COMAC's factory.

ICBC Financial Leasing is the C919's biggest individual launching buyer, having placed 45 orders. But Cong Lin, its chairman, says it will take an active part in promoting the aircraft internationally, after the two sides signed a strategic agreement at the China Aviation Expo in Beijing in September.

Cong says some of its other foreign customers had expressed interest in placing orders for the C919, after Bangkok-based City Airways recently signed an option for 10 of the aircraft through ICBC Financial Leasing.

"The City Airways' orders show the international market is receptive to China-made aircraft," Cong says.

Jiang Bo, the head of aviation finance at ICBC Financial Leasing, says that with an established network of more than 40 overseas customers worldwide, the company has a strong advantage in promoting the C919 globally,

"Our experience on the international market could prove invaluable for this and other China-made airplane manufacturers, in their efforts to expand globally," Jiang says.

The leasing company offers financial and consulting services to customers in both Beijing and Dublin, Ireland, which is an important center for global aircraft leasing industry, Jiang says.

The company is also able to provide financing solutions to other C919 customers, he says.

COMAC has focused on C919 sales at home and in the Asia-Pacific and Africa, but Jiang now expects that to expand quickly to other markets.

"We are including the promotion of the C919 within our own global marketing activities," he says, "but we are realistic that we have to be patient."

Jiang says the C919 could prove a hard-sell globally given that it is still only at the test-flight stage, with conceivably many months of testing before the aircraft can start being built in numbers and delivered.

Industry insiders have confirmed that potential international customers have been hesitant, and suggested that COMAC has been too slow with its global marketing.

Zhang Yugui, dean of the school of economics and finance at Shanghai International Studies University, says: "It has focused for years on manufacturing, but a solid marketing and service infrastructure is yet to be put in place."

(China Daily Africa Weekly 11/06/2015 page16)