Yup, the synopsis is pretty much WD1’s explanation in a nutshell.
But the story is far more interesting and a mirror on China in the 1980s.
Remember as a communist nation China could have declared the Y10 prerequiste buy for the airlines and have them serve as internal market and incubator. Aeroflot serves pretty much the same way for Russian airliners deemed below western standards.
That China didn’t just allowed the Y10 to die but actually killed it over objections of many is a pretty amazing. And they didn’t kill a poor project.
The Y-10 was a technical success. Three were made by Shanghai Aviation which from 1980 to 1984 flew 130 times times. Among the cities graced by the Y10 were Beijing, Harbin, Urumqi, Zhengzhou, Hefei, Guangzhou, Kunming, Chengdu as well as the home city of hanghai. It flew seven time flies to Lhasa along so-called “the death route” because of the high altitude and the landing and takeoff requirements in thin air.
It was could carry up to 179 passengers. There were many PLAAF plans for it including the AWACS config.
There was a long article posted on the Y10 in the chinese forum lamenting the fate of the Y10 (this year being the 24th anniversary of first flight.)
Quoted from the article, “the Chinese commercial aviation industry is the ultimate killer of the Y10.”
In the 1980s, airline officials in China wanted Western aircraft. They wanted to split the airlines from being tied to the state aircraft industry. They actually fought tooth and nail against the Y10 because they were afraid they would be required to buy it.
Worse, Shanghai Aviation made a horrible mistake in destroying the Y10 assembly lines when they tied up with McDonnell Douglas in assembling the MD-80.
I couldn’t blame the airlines, especially if you look the size of the Chinese carrier industry today. Flying western aircraft has made them world-class airlines in two short decades (Air China, China Eastern and China Southern have some of the best safety records in the world.)
But many said that if the government had made companies buy at least a few Y10s they would have kept a great technical base.
This plane flew and flew quite well. It wasn’t as modern as Western aircraft at the time. But it could have survived just as the Y-7 has survived as a Chinese feeder line aircraft.
But to the airlines, West was best and that was that. Though I would doubt something like what happened to the Y10 would happen today. The ARJ21, China’s latest commercial carrier project already sold 35 airplanes before the first prototype has flown.
But 1980s was a special period where there were a lot of Western/Chinese tie-ups – the J8II Peace Pearl project, Super 7, Speys for the JH-7, talks of China buying Harriers, the Aspide from Italy, etc. All of those ended after 1989.
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