"That Ryanair in Ireland?" Li Guowei repeated.

"A year ago, when I was working at General Motors, I heard that this Irish company had found Boeing and asked if Boeing had plans to continue developing 50-seat regional passenger planes." Li Guowei spread his hands.

"Oh, they actually looked for Boeing before they came to us?" Liang Yuan asked curiously.

Throughout the 1980s, the development prospects of the next generation of advanced regional passenger aircraft seemed as chaotic as fog. Generally speaking, two views occupied a mainstream position in the international aviation community. One is that the development trends of regional passenger aircraft and trunk passenger aircraft are consistent, and are developing towards a larger and larger direction.

There is another view that the 50-seat jet branch line is the future of the development of regional passenger planes.

If you go deeper along these two ideas, you will draw two conclusions. If the regional passenger planes develop in a larger and larger direction, then the 737 or A320 narrow body trunk series that have been recognized by the international mainstream aviation community can be fully backward compatible. In this way, redeveloping a brand new regional passenger plane platform will seem to be a loss.

The 50-seat jet regional passenger plane is completely useless for giants like Boeing, Airbus and even McDonald. Instead of investing resources to do such small aircraft without any technical content, it is better to concentrate on the next generation of narrow-body trunk passenger planes or wide-body large passenger planes that are related to their own corporate competitiveness.

These two mainstream opinions deeply influenced the judgment of international aviation companies at that time. The two strong regional passenger aircraft in the future, Canada Bombardier and Brazilian aircraft companies both chose the 50-seat judgment plan. The two started the research and development of the Crj100 series and Erj145 series regional passenger aircraft platforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

However, with the collapse of the Soviet Iron Curtain, global resources have withdrawn from the confrontation of the Cold War, and the regional passenger aircraft market has developed rapidly with an explosion-like trend. The number of passengers of 50-seat regional passenger aircraft has begun to be short of passengers around 95 years, and the 80-100-seat class has begun to become the mainstream requirement of airlines.

Of course, due to the huge investment in the aviation industry, Bombardier and the Brazilian aircraft industry have observed for two to five years before deciding to develop the next generation of regional passenger aircraft with a passenger capacity of 80-100. However, the hesitation after several years of observation has also led to Airbus launching a319 and Boeing launching a 717 and other models entering the regional passenger aircraft market to erode the share.

However, in the late 1980s, the competition for international civil aviation aircraft was full of smoke. It was far from the fact that the two giants A and B were comparable in tit-for-tat. Rumors about Boeing's attempt to develop 50-seat regional passenger aircraft were flying all over the sky. It was no surprise that Ryanair came to Boeing to find Boeing.

Li Guowei nodded and said with a smile: "When Ryan's operations director O'Reilly visited Seattle, he also proposed whether his company could moderately participate in the new plan for the development of Boeing's new passenger aircraft. Because Ryan had no reputation and influence in the aviation operation industry, Boeing decisively rejected O'Reilly's proposal. After trying to get O'Reilly to buy a 737 passenger aircraft, Boeing used a document to bring O'Reilly back to Ireland and clearly denied its recent plan to develop a 50-seat regional passenger aircraft."

Liang Yuan laughed when he heard this. With Boeing's mentality of claiming that he was the best in the world at this time, super big airlines such as Xinhua Airlines, All Nippon Airways, and Lufthansa could make Boeing smile, and dusty shrimps like Ryan can be ignored.

Unfortunately, Boeing would not have thought that this seemingly inconspicuous Ryanair had developed into the largest cheap air transport company in Europe in just ten years, with a fleet of more than 300 aircraft (Note 1).

Of course, if Liang Yuan had not intervened in Ryanair, he would eventually choose Boeing 737 series passenger aircraft as its leading fleet. However, with Liang Yuan joining forces, Boeing was destined to lose this extremely huge piece of fat.

In the development reports made by COMAC and Mbb on CMB Aerospace, it is estimated that before the official first flight of the .cm100 passenger plane at the end of 1993, CMB Aerospace's fixed asset investment will be at least one billion US dollars, and the investment in R&D, management, production and other personnel will increase year by year, with an average annual average of US$300 million, which means that CMB Aerospace's overall investment in the CMB100 project is as high as US$2.2 billion.

If calculated based on the average price of US$20 million per cm series passenger aircraft, based on the profit margins of similar chip industries in the aviation industry as a reference, the approximate breakeven point of CMB Aerospace is around 240 aircraft.

It can be said that just relying on Ryanair's orders, CMB Aerospace can rest assured that it will be safe to survive in the future. If we consider that Ryanair's leadership and demonstration role played by other newly established low-cost airlines after dominating the European low-cost airline market, it will be normal for the sales of cm series regional passenger aircraft to double.

In fact, in the plane without Liang Yuan joining, the reason why Ryanair finally chose Boeing 737 series passenger aircraft as its operating fleet was largely influenced by Southwest Airlines, the pioneer of global low-cost airlines.

"Mr. Li may not know that before Ryanair found Boeing, the first aviation aircraft manufacturer I looked for was Mbb. In 1986, Lufthansa and Ryanair were interested in updating their propeller regional passenger planes into jet regional passenger planes and expanding their fleet size. At that time, the two companies proposed more than 30 intention orders."

"It can be said that this is the reason why the mpc75 project was initially established for the cm100 passenger plane. At that time, the mpc75 project carried only 50 passengers. It was completely aimed at orders from Lufthansa and Ryanair. Now things have been going around for three years. In addition to the additional United Airlines in our country, things have basically returned to the starting point." Liang Yuan said with a smile.

The reason why Liang Yuan dared to go against the public and led Yuanjia to the unfounded aviation industry was to capture the cheap airlines that would be popular on the planet in the future. In this market, the demand for professional jet regional passenger aircraft below 100 seats alone exceeded 6,000 before the new century, and after entering the new century, it exploded into more than 10,000 in just five years.

More importantly, before the Asian financial crisis in 1998, Airbus and Boeing focused their attention and energy on the field of giant airliners in the 1998. This huge market of more than $300 billion was not noticed by any powerful veteran aviation companies in the late 1980s.

Without Lufthansa as the starting user of the crj100/200 regional passenger plane, Bombardier's confidence in entering regional passenger planes will definitely be hit, not to mention that Liang Yuan also directed COMAC and Bombardier to compete with the British Short Aircraft Company.

First, the tentacles of Bombardier's extension into the regional passenger aircraft field were cut off, and when the Brazilian aircraft company launched the erj145 R&D plan in 1995, the cm100 series passenger aircraft had long become a climate.

By then, this market of more than US$300 billion will be taken over by CMB Aerospace. At that time, Yuanjia's weapon will be mixed up with Liang Yuan's character. Even if Boeing and Airbus' legs are not discounted, it will be peeled off the two giants. (To be continued.) h118
Chapter completed!