Dear Fellow Traveling Aerophiles,
A chance encounter with an old acquaintance in the rain. Is there a lovelier phrase in English? I found myself thinking this whilst recently being driven in central Java, near Yogyakarta, when “N-250 PA1” showed up mysteriously in my Google Maps app (how much do tech companies know about us?). We drove to the spot, and there it was, Production Article 1, from the doomed N-250 program, forlornly outside the Indonesian Air Force museum. There it is to the right, with me getting wet.
Longtime readers might recall my disapproving attitude towards this plane and its parentage (see here for what I thought would be my final thoughts on the subject, 16 years ago). But seeing PA1 now, for me, evoked nostalgia for an age gone by. I’m still in Indonesia, so below are my somewhat self-indulgent vacation letter observations:
1. Nation-building has changed. I didn’t believe in the economics of a country building its own national plane (as explained in my letter). But at least I understood the idea of a country developing with its own manufacturing industry. When the N-250 began in the late 1980s, it was gospel that all Asian countries had to follow Japan, South Korea, China, and the others and start building cars, VCRs, computers, or something.
But now, manufacturing is hardly viewed as essential or high-tech. Software, apps, and coding weren’t big things when the N-250 began life, but certainly are now. What else is big today? Semiconductors, as proven by Taiwan. Materials refining, particularly green economy materials like lithium. Entertainment – music and film has been a huge boost to South Korea’s economy. Also, consider Bali. Its industrial strategy consists of attracting tourists, and they’re great at it. Bali embraced the Service Economy, and it works for them. But no matter what approach countries take to economic development, Airplanes are no longer seen as a crucial element of nation building.
2. Nobody can predict the future. When the N-250 began, regional aircraft weren’t a high-risk idea. The market wasn’t huge, but it was stable, so if you wanted your country to manufacture hard goods, why not give it a try? Well, that market suddenly collapsed. For that matter, so did VCRs. Gasoline cars might collapse, too. Those massive semiconductor plants the US and others are creating might face obsolescence one day, or at least overcapacity. Consider all the cash now going to eVtols, and all sorts of goofy vertical air taxi services. Some will probably survive, but most won’t.
This isn’t an excuse to do nothing, of course, and governments can certainly play a role in the economy. But betting a big part of the national budget on a single aircraft, as Indonesia almost did, makes your industrial strategy vulnerable to a single point of failure.
3. One certainty: Defense. One aspect of the future is pretty clear: human aggression and insecurity are permanent realities, so spending on national defense industries looks a lot more successful than a civil aero strategy. South Korea, Turkey, Israel, Taiwan, and others are emerging producers who looked at civil aero programs, then walked away and went back to a near-pure defense model. South Korea and Israel have been hugely successful. Taiwan has created a degree of self-sufficiency. Turkey’s prospects remain unknown, but Erdogan made national military aircraft development the centerpiece of his vainglorious yet successful re-election campaign. And speaking of authoritarianism….
4. Authoritarianism hasn’t changed much. As I wrote in my 2007 letter, emerging plane producers need to Kill The Messengers. Or just silence them. The Modi government clearly learned that lesson. India’s recent arrest of Defense News reporter Vivek Raghuvanshi hardly says great things about the national programs he covers.
5. What the hell happened (and will happen) with Regionals? Again, it’s hard to predict the future, but the collapse of regional markets was a bizarre event. When the N-250 began, there were 14 regional turboprop programs; today, there’s just ATR. Regional Jets took over, but Embraer’s family is the last one left, unless you count the ARJ21, for some reason.
Yet there are still many hundreds of aging regionals flying, with few ideas about what will replace them. As we saw at Le Bourget this year, lots of people have high-tech answers to this question. Some look worthy; will they go ahead? I tend to think that whoever launches something first will likely be successful; there may even be room for two (plus ATR, I’d expect). Whatever the answer, it won’t be something built in Indonesia.
6. Finally, when I began my career 35 years ago I kind of wanted to be an aircraft industry anthropologist, someone who looked at how cultures around the world approached aircraft design, manufacture, and training in different ways. That job didn’t exist and likely never will, but I wanted to do it. Yet 35 years later, there have been plenty of civil market exits and failures (from Scotland to Sweden to Spain to India to Argentina) and no successful starts.
To me, the N-250, in its own economically disastrous way, also exemplified a world of interesting cultural possibilities, which explains my slightly bittersweet feelings about visiting its grave. When Japan’s MRJ arrived in 2007, it almost seemed like the charming last gasp of this old era. Perhaps that’s why a lot of people like me were reluctant to say that Mitsubishi was throwing cash on a funeral pyre.
I guess we still have China. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish.
Yours, Until Bali Proves Me Wrong, With A Successful BRJ,
Richard Aboulafia