Fuji Heavy Industries is adopting production techniques from its Subaru car division to cut costs and help win a share of future narrowbody programs from both Airbus and Boeing. “We can see that a very big wave is coming, and we would like to ride it,” says Yasuhiro Hamanaka, general manager of Fuji’s aerospace division, noting that entry into service is probably a decade away.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is keen to take on final assembly of whatever aircraft Boeing builds to replace the 737, say industry executives in Japan. One executive believes it is technically feasible for Mitsubishi and its compatriots Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Fuji Heavy Industries, which together make 35% of the 787, to build all of the major sections of the 737 replacement. One of them could be responsible for final assembly. The same executive doubts that Boeing would be willing to hand over so much work, however.

Masayuki Kubo is in an enviable position for a Japanese aircraft engineer—and an unenviable one. He has been lucky enough to be chosen as Kawasaki’s chief designer in the program that has broken a three-decade drought in the development of large Japanese aircraft. But he has been perhaps too lucky, because the program made him responsible for developing not one but two large aircraft. Neither he nor his team had done even one before. Moreover, they had to develop both the XP-1 maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) and the C-X airlifter at the same time.