Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation

Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation is Taiwan's national aircraft manufacturer, and its history explains its shape. Founded in 1969 under the air force, transferred to the Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology in 1983, turned into a government company under the Ministry of Economic Affairs in 1996 and listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in August 2014, AIDC now runs a deliberately mixed book of military and commercial work from Taichung. Five business areas structure the company: military business, commercial aircraft, engine business, aircraft maintenance and avionics, and flight and technology service.

The military line owns Taiwan's indigenous aircraft lineage. AIDC built the PL-1 primary trainer, the T-CH-1 basic trainer, the AT-3 advanced jet trainer and the XA-3 attacker, licence assembled F-5E and F-5F fighters and UH-1H helicopters, and developed the F-CK-1 Ching-Kuo Indigenous Defence Fighter. Its current flagship is the T-5 Brave Eagle advanced jet trainer, ordered in 66 aircraft under a 2017 agreement with the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, flown for the first time in June 2020 and developed with more than a million lines of in-house flight control and avionics code. It replaces both the AT-3 and the F-5E and F-5F aircraft the air force has used for training. The company opened an F-16 maintenance and support centre with Lockheed Martin in 2020, and it has moved into unmanned aircraft as a production and integration hub, chairing the Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunity Alliance announced in 2024.

Commercial aircraft work makes AIDC a supplier to the western airframers. It produces A320 and A220 composite and metal components, Boeing 737 door assemblies, Boeing 787 composite and metal assemblies, the CL3500 rear fuselage and Global 7500 main landing gear doors for Bombardier, Learjet 70 and 75 empennages, C-27J empennages, S-92 and H-92 cockpits and cabin auxiliary power unit installation kits.

The engine business grew from a 1973 venture with Lycoming and now manufactures for General Electric, Honeywell, Pratt and Whitney, Rolls-Royce, Safran, Kawasaki, IHI and Mitsubishi. It has produced the T53-L-13B, T53-L-701A, TFE731, TFE1042, CT7, HTF7000 and F124 series, and runs three case lines turning out more than 10,000 engine cases a year across some 600 part numbers.

Aircraft maintenance and avionics executes maintenance contracts on the Brave Eagle, F-CK-1, F-16 A/B and AT-3, and produces and repairs avionics, harnesses, test equipment and integrated logistics support. Flight and technology service covers flight testing, aerial target and target drone operations, business aviation and medical evacuation flying with a Gulfstream G100, gas turbine power plants and energy storage, railway driver simulators and train monitoring systems, satellite structures and harnesses for the Formosat programme, and the AIxWARE smart manufacturing platform.