China’s first passenger plane, a competitor to Boeing and Airbus, concludes its first operational flight
The first narrow-body passenger jet developed in China – the C919 – made its maiden commercial flight on Sunday, a milestone in the country's bid to challenge the Boeing-Airbus duopoly in aircraft manufacturing.
With the symbolic number MU9191, the flight, operated by China Eastern Airlines and carrying more than 130 passengers, departed from Shanghai's Hongqiao airport around 10.30, about 10 minutes earlier than scheduled.
The flight was greeted with a fountain of water upon landing at Beijing Capital Airport at 12.30, state broadcaster CCTV reported live.
The two-hour commercial flight comes after 16 years of development as China seeks to reduce its reliance on foreign technologies in a bitter rivalry with the US-led West.
A 14-year-old student from Beijing told CCTV he was "excited" to catch his flight back to Shanghai at around 2.50pm.
“This is the first large aircraft produced by China and I know it's significant, because my family is also involved in the aviation industry,” he said. "I had to be here to see it all, so I signed up for today's flight in February and had the opportunity to fly home."
There will also be a regular C919 service between Shanghai and Chengdu, capital of China's southwestern province of Sichuan, from Monday.
At the flight launch ceremony on Sunday, China Eastern general manager Li Yangmin said, "The safety, reliability and capabilities necessary to ensure [the aircraft's] performance have been fully demonstrated."
Designed to compete with the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 family of single-aisle aircraft, the C919 has been hailed by state media as a demonstration of China's technological prowess.
Although Airbus and Boeing have congratulated themselves online, the threat to Western dominance in the sector is real, if not immediate: it will take some time for the aircraft to obtain approval in a significant number of countries, but the jet, if competitive in terms of prices and consumption, it really runs the risk of overcoming the situation of a market practically divided in half between two players.
Manufactured by the state-owned Commercial Aviation Corporation of China (Comac), the 38.9-metre-long and 11.95-metre-high aircraft has eight business class seats and 156 economy class seats, CCTV reported. The plane was supposed to have three pilots on board and reach a speed of Mach 0.78, equal to about 955 km/h (593 miles per hour).
The special in-flight menu for the maiden voyage included claypot rice, mango pudding and chocolate shortbread, as well as White Rabbit fudge, a Shanghai trademark.
The C919 gained nationwide attention after the announcement of the domestic aircraft development program in 2007. However, progress has been slow.
In 2014, President Xi Jinping visited the Comac office and called for "relentless" efforts to develop and produce large passenger aircraft, calling them "an important symbol of a country's aviation level and an important sign of its overall strength".
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The article The first Chinese passenger plane, competitor of Boeing and Airbus, concludes its first operational flight comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-primo-aereo-passeggeri-cinese-concorrente-di-boeing-e-airbus-conclude-il-suo-primo-volo-operativo/ on Sun, 28 May 2023 19:23:08 +0000.