> and has been fitted on operational airplanes successfully for almost a decade Sort of hard to believe this given the Chinese were buying AL-31FNs by the thou

> and has been fitted on operational airplanes successfully for almost a decade Sort of hard to believe this given the Chinese were buying AL-31FNs by the thousands since early 2010s. As it is, I think they hit the metallurgical problems with the hot part from the get go and are struggling with them ever since. Given that the hot part (final compressor stages, combustion and the turbines) aren't that dissimilar from the cores of commercial turbofans I'm inclined to think it's all hot air as is was for the last 10-20 years. Sure they can assemble some CFM56 derivatives around imported cores and that's it.