K-8

The K-8 Karakorum seems to be quite successful, escecially for a Chinese aircraft. I’ve heard positive and negative opinions (as ever) about this plane. But I wonder what’s it really like; it’s successful in the export, but China won’t buy it (it probably opts for the FTC-2000) and Pakistan isn’t very interested either. Rather strange: the developpers don’t buy the plane, but it finds a lot of international customers… Any opinions?

As a start I’ll give you a possible explanation, to get the discussion going: is it possible that it’s the only plane that combines a low price, low techlevel and pretty good reliability? I mean: most African countries can’t afford the modern western equipment and if they can, they aren’t able to work at such a high techlevel or to maintain those western planes. They are more interested in cheap and simple planes, and those aren’t made anymore in the west.
If that’s the case, China could win a lot of influence in the military aircraft market in the future…

What’s your opinion?