Airbus, Boeing, or Beijing? Ryanair CEO Will Buy China's C919 'If It's Cheap Enough'

Could Ryanair do the unthinkable and buy Chinese-built planes? Speaking to Skift, Michael O’Leary, Ryanair Group CEO said he would happily order aircraft from China if the price was right.

“The Chinese are basically building a f**king A320. So if it was cheap enough – 10 or 20% cheaper than an Airbus aircraft – then we’d order it,” O’Leary said Thursday.

Chinese-built commercial jets are in their infancy, but many analysts expect the country to eventually emerge as a credible competitor to today’s Western-manufactured options.

Beijing’s highest hopes are for the C919 plane. This is produced by Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac), a state-owned firm founded in 2008 to develop passenger airliners. It is considered an emerging rival to Airbus’ A320 and the Boeing 737 programs.

While Comac’s first product, the ARJ21, has only chalked up around 130 deliveries to date, the C919 is proving to be much more popular. This new-generation model has won hundreds of orders from state-backed airlines, including Air China and China Southern. 

The plane made its first flight in 2017 after years of delays. At present, only the Civil Aviation Administration of China has certified the new jet to fly in passenger service, but this is likely to change in the coming years.

Could the C919 Fly in Europe?

Despite current regulatory hurdles, O’Leary suggested that the C919 will be granted permission to fly in Western markets, and at that stage, it could become a viable option.

“Ultimately the aircraft will be certified. We’re always focused on buying aircraft at the lowest possible price and at the most opportune time. I don’t care who makes them, whether it’s Boeing, Airbus, or Comac. As long as the price is right, we’d buy it,” he said.

Ryanair’s flirtation with Chinese aircraft goes back more than a decade. In 2011, the Irish low-cost carrier made headlines by announcing a design partnership agreement with Comac. This fueled fierce industry chatter as to whether Ryanair was genuinely interested in Comac, or simply threatening a Chinese order to bolster negotiating leverage with Western planemakers.

The rationale behind O’Leary’s latest intervention is debatable, however, one point is beyond doubt. The Ryanair Group will be buying more planes – and not necessarily from Boeing.

The Ryanair and Boeing Relationship

Ryanair is one of Boeing’s biggest customers, with hundreds of planes in service, and hundreds more on order. While the core Ryanair airline is famously an all-Boeing operation, its Lauda subsidiary based in Austria, flies around 30 rival Airbus A320 jets. 

“We’re big enough now that we could have Airbus and [Boeing] 737s. I would still like to do a deal with Airbus for new [Lauda] aircraft, but there’s no sign of any reasonably priced Airbus aircraft this side of 2030,” said O’Leary.

“I’m not wedded – it doesn’t all have to be 737s, but if we are going to order replacement aircraft they have to be cheap, and that means we have to have cash on the balance sheet that means we’re able to order aircraft during a crisis.”

Never Waste a Crisis

The Ryanair chief offered candid insight into the company’s buying patterns, with big savings to be had when ordering in a distressed market: “It’s the timing of your orders rather than what you’re ordering that makes the difference for us. The critical thing is to order aircraft at a time of crisis in the system. All we know in this industry is that there’s a crisis visited upon us every four or five years. We’re building up the balance sheet to get ready. When is it, and what will cause it, we don’t know. But we know it’s coming. This is a shitty industry that never has more than four or five years without a f**king existential crisis.

“We thought the Max grounding was the existential crisis, and then f**king Covid arrived out of nowhere. There hadn’t been a worldwide pandemic for 100 years. It’s not difficult to put together a scenario that says the war in Ukraine goes wrong, Russia invades the Baltic states, and everyone stops flying.”

Well-documented delivery problems at Boeing have caused headaches for Ryanair. The airline group originally forecast 205 million passengers in the financial year to March 2025, with 215 million in the following year. Ryanair cited aircraft delivery delays for cutting this back to 200 million for 2024-25 and 206 million for 2025-26. 

In the medium term, if aircraft deliveries run more smoothly, the Dublin-based carrier is aiming to leap from 200 million passengers in the current financial year to 300 million passengers by 2033 or 2034.

A Cool Response to Comac

O’Leary’s openminded approach to Comac-built planes is in contrast to Air Lease executive chairman Steven Udvar-Hazy. Speaking last year, the industry veteran said he wasn’t interested in Chinese aircraft, describing discussions as “a one-way dating relationship.”

Udvar-Hazy said he did not believe the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration or the European Union Aviation Safety Agency would approve the C919 for commercial flying in its current form, casting doubt on its appeal among Western carriers.

Although China refers to the jet as “homegrown," Chinese newspaper The Global Times has previously stated that at least 40% of the components of the aircraft are internationally sourced.

Take its engines as an example. These are supplied by Safran, the same company that powers many A320neo and 737 Max planes. Other international partnerships include joint ventures with Europe’s Liebherr-Aerospace for the landing gear, North Carolina-based Honeywell providing the flight control systems, and GE Aviation producing the plane’s flight deck displays.

Christian Scherer, the CEO of Airbus’ commercial aircraft division, previously said the C919 was “not going to rock the boat.” However, Boeing’s Asia-Pacific commercial marketing managing director Dave Schulte said the U.S. planemaker is factoring in competition from the C919 in its long-term forecasts, according to CNBC.