Advertisement
Japan
This Week in AsiaEconomics

Japan’s SpaceJet dream to compete with Boeing, Airbus was a flight of fancy: insiders

  • Mitsubishi Heavy had hoped the US$7.6 billion project would put Japanese aviation on the map, but it lacked the technical know-how to get it off the ground
  • The firm was ‘designing the wrong plane for the wrong markets and at the wrong time’, an analyst said

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
18
A decade after SpaceJet was due for commercial roll-out, Japan’s aviation dream appears all but over. File photo: Mitsubishi/TNS
Julian Ryall
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on Tuesday scrapped its ambitious bid to develop a passenger plane, in a move industry insiders said came as little surprise but was “a terrible blow to the prestige of Japan’s hi-tech industries”.
The government-backed SpaceJet project was launched 15 years ago to elevate Japan’s aviation industry to compete with the likes of Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier and Embraer.

Mitsubishi Heavy initially expected to roll out its first plane by 2013, but a lack of know-how and technological snags caused the company to postpone its delivery date six times, leading to repeated design changes. On Tuesday, it said the jet had “failed to confirm sufficient business viability”.

Advertisement

Tokyo-based analyst Geoff Tudor from Japan Aviation Management Research said the cancellation came as “no surprise at all” to those in the industry. “They have only been maintaining one of the test aircraft for the last couple of years, and it was obvious that the end of the story was coming,” he said.

Exhibitors stand next to a Spacejet model display at the Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation booth during the Singapore Airshow in February 2020. The firm laid off almost all its staff on the project later that year. Photo: AFP
Exhibitors stand next to a Spacejet model display at the Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation booth during the Singapore Airshow in February 2020. The firm laid off almost all its staff on the project later that year. Photo: AFP

The termination of the project appeared inevitable in 2020 when Mitsubishi Heavy and its partners cut 95 per cent of the people still working on SpaceJet, although it insisted at the time that the changes were merely a “reorganisation”. By then, an estimated 1 trillion yen (US$7.6 billion) had been spent.

Advertisement
Advertisement
Select Voice
Choose your listening speed
Get through articles 2x faster
1.25x
250 WPM
Slow
Average
Fast
1.25x