It has been reported that the first international delivery of China’s domestic production “ARJ21” type passenger aircraft has been made.
According to Xinhua’s report, one of the planes produced by the China Commercial Aircraft Company (COMAC) was delivered to Indonesian airline TransNusa.
With the delivery, a passenger plane manufactured by China entered the foreign market for the first time.
The first test flight of the regional passenger aircraft ARJ21 was made in 2008, and its suitability for flight was registered at the end of 2014.
The aircraft, which was produced by the licensed assembly of Boeing’s subsidiary McDonnell Douglas’s “MD-80” and “MD-90” type aircraft in China, has a capacity of 78 to 95 passengers.
The short-haul passenger aircraft, which can travel up to 3,700 kilometers, can fly in alpine mountainous regions and plateaus, and can be used in different airport conditions.
Nearly 100 ARJ21 aircraft in China have carried more than 5.6 million passengers on 300 routes in more than 100 cities to date.
First delivery of C919 made
The first delivery of China’s first domestically produced narrow-body passenger aircraft, the C919, was made to China Eastern airline on 9 December.
It is planned that passenger planes designed as “Boeing 737” and “Airbus 320” equivalents will be used in domestic commercial flights as of 2023.
The single-aisle narrow-body aircraft developed by COMAC can carry between 156 and 168 passengers.
The model made its first test flight on May 14, and received the “type license”, which registered its suitability for flight, on September 30, and the production license on November 30.
Since critical components of the C919, such as the jet engine and control software, are manufactured by US companies such as General Electric and Honeywell, it is not entirely domestic.
In the next phase, COMAC plans to develop a wide-body airliner with a capacity of 250 to 320 passengers, called the “CR929”, in partnership with the United Aircraft Corporation of Russia (UAC).
China aims to have a share in the global passenger aircraft market dominated by US Boeing and European Airbus companies with domestically produced passenger aircraft.
