Japan jets into regional plane market

Read between the lines: A money-losing make-work project to cater to the sleaziest elements of the US-Japan airline conspiracy.

It's about time the WTO started taking a serious look at airline procurement. I mean, come on. The fact that the heavily indebted Japanese are willing to commit so much money and effort to a project with no hope of making any money should raise JUST A FEW alarm bells. Duh!

The danger? That the more competitive and market-oriented manufacturers could be muscled out of the market, and us consumers (and Japan-based taxpayers) will be the ones to suffer.

I am with you on this, JeffLee. MHI have a very thick hose delivering taxpayers hard-earned cash straight into their gullet. I doubt they would survive without it. But they are well connected and the press is supine and it can always be argued that this is a project to benefit the nation.

Gee I wonder where they learned how to make jets...?

Anyone..? Oh~ maybe because all the proprietary technology they just happened to borrow (take without permission) from all their build under license military aircraft...

The U.S. should apply their same guiding principles, except with cars...

Naw... We don't want to buy any cars from you... We want our government to select a few (government backed 'Zaibatsu' Industries) and sell us some licenses to make Toyota's... How about that...? We'll give ten cents on the dollar for every car we make in licensing fees.. About what Sikorsky, or Boeing, or Lockheed, or name one, makes from every F-16, or CH-47, or P-3, ect... Do I really need to give more specifics..? You know the drill... You know... We export all our stuff to America, and we allow basically nothing except small tinker toys or hamburger to come into our markets...

I think this could actually be a good airplane. But maybe too little, too late. BBD and Embraer are already into their 2nd generation on their CRJs and ERJs. Maybe Mitsubishi should have looked at something to rival the new C-Series. A 100-120 seater is where the market will be short. They do have a couple good orders in the USA, 200 orders/options. But I don't expect many sales in Japan, where there are less than 40 regional jets flying. And it won't help with the 70 seat turboprops making a comeback.

The Dreamliner is like a Lexus and the MRJ is like a minicar. lets hope the MRJ doesnt come with minicar safety!

So they could not do composite so they went for old technology. If I was a buyer, I would stay with Brazil's Embraer with it's commercial aircraft history going back to 1996. In the field there are Bombardier, Beriev, Antonov, BAE, Sukhoi, Tupolev, YAK, and still Boeing and Airbus. The field seems a little crowded. Not to mention that a delivery date of 2015 is a year behind the forecasted 2014. If I were a regional jet company, I would want a company with a longer track record especially since the planes are very close in cost. Not to mention that I would not want to training pilots on another plane if I don't have to.

If I was a buyer, I would stay with Brazil's Embraer with it's commercial aircraft history going back to 1996.

If you were a Japanese buyer or a foreign buyer with obligations to Japanese suppliers, you would be forced to go with a MRJ, for reasons other than technology or economics.

That's why the WTO needs to investigate this and all the other collusive and underhanded moves in Japan's aircraft industry, which are aimed at destroying Embraer and others.

ka_chan

Neither Boeing or Airbus develops such small planes.

JeffLee

If WTO starts investigating they will start with the ARJ21.

@ka_chan, maybe their commercial jet history is since 1996, but Embraer has been making commercial aircraft since the early 70s.