China’s C919 jet ready for delivery, and competition with Boeing and Airbus?
Business & Technology
China’s most established commercial planemaker is getting ready to take its C919 single-aisle passenger plane to market.
Last week, the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) announced in official media (in Chinese) that the C919, the country’s first domestically manufactured commercial jet aircraft, made its first successful winter test flight, in late December 2020, at temperatures as low as -40°F — which is, counterintuitively, also -40°C.
- Today, state and commercial media are reporting (in Chinese) that the city of Shanghai “is promoting the airworthiness certification of the C919.”
- Furthermore, according to state-owned tabloid the Global Times, “The C919 aircraft is scheduled for delivery to the first client at the end of 2021.”
- COMAC will deliver its first C919 single-aisle jet by the end of the year, a long-awaited first step into a market that currently has only two players: Airbus and Boeing.
The C919 will compete with Boeing’s 737 Max and Airbus’s A320 — it is a single-aisle passenger jet with a maximum passenger capacity of 190 seats.
- The announcement is a small milestone in China’s quest for domestically designed and manufactured commercial airplanes that could challenge the duopoly of Boeing and Airbus.
- So far, the C919 has almost exclusively received orders from Chinese airlines, including the country’s “big three” of China Eastern, China Southern, and Air China.
Many analysts pour cold water on the prospect of the C919 being a global player in the international aviation market:
- Currently, the Chinese aircraft industry has been hit with sanctions from the U.S. government — more than half of the parts required to make the C919 are foreign imports.
