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Lost luggage. Frustrating delays. Bad food. It's hard to get too excited about flying these days. Hard, that is, unless you've just boarded the Airbus A300 owned by former Indian Airlines engineer B.C. Gupta. Take, for example, the safety demonstration. After asking for a volunteer from the 120 or so kids crammed, some two to a seat, in the plane's economy-class cabin, flight attendant Ridhi Sehgal explains how the oxygen masks work. A plastic deck chair appears and Sehgal helps the volunteer, a worried-looking boy of 7, up onto it so that the other passengers...
...Bangda airport in Tibet is challenging for planes as well as pilots. Tucked between mountain ranges on the Tibetan Plateau, Bangda's runway is the world's highest at 14,000 ft. (4,300 m) above sea level. Because the air is so thin there, the large Boeing and Airbus aircraft that comprise most of China's domestic fleet lack the power and lift to take off and land comfortably under certain conditions, especially in bad weather with a full load of passengers. So in 2002, the Beijing government came up with a surprising solution: China would build a small...
...course, rosy projections and grand national ambitions alone aren't enough to guarantee the successful launch of a new aircraft - let alone a new commercial aerospace manufacturer. The duopoly of Airbus and Boeing own the market for large jetliners; Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer are entrenched as leaders in regional jets and turboprops. Indonesia discovered just how treacherous the market can be in the 1990s when that country's government tried to bootstrap an aircraft-manufacturing industry by building 100-seat turboprop planes. The venture failed following Asia's 1997 financial crisis when it lost government funding. During the 1960s...
...ACAC still has to deliver a competitive airplane. The company is not starting from scratch. It has made parts for both Boeing and Airbus since the early 1980s. ACAC's Shanghai factory was named one of Boeing's best in 2005, and China's engineers have so far set a fast pace in the rollout of the ARJ21. "Staying on schedule is our biggest challenge," says chief engineer Jiang Liping. At full capacity, ACAC hopes to build 50 of the jets a year. The supply chain is state of the art. Fuselage sections are built at factories throughout China - located...
...designing additional versions of the ARJ21. Ultimately, China intends to go toe-to-toe with the biggest in the business. In March, Chinese leaders pledged to invest at least $6 billion to produce a 150-seat jetliner that by 2020 could be competing with the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320. "The ARJ21 is just the start for us," says ACAC's Luo. "Really, the sky's the limit." First, though, you've got to get the plane off the ground...