FIRST INDIGENOUS CHINA AIRCRAFT TAKES TO AIRSPACE
People wave flags as China's first domestic regional jet ARJ21-700 arrives at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport after making its first flight... on June 28, 2016. Photo: AFP |
China’s home-grown regional jet made its first commercial flight Tuesday, operator Chengdu Airlines said, after years of delays raised questions about the country’s ambitious plans for domestically-produced planes.
Chengdu Airlines flew the ARJ21 from its eponymous
home base, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, to the
commercial hub Shanghai carrying 70 passengers.
More than half were paying customers who were aware
they were flying in a new plane, an airline spokesman told AFP.
The ARJ21 — which stands for Advanced Regional Jet
for the 21st Century — will ferry flyers on the Chengdu-Shanghai route three
times a week, he added.
The inaugural flight was the culmination of a
14-year programme to make China a commercial aircraft manufacturer capable of
competing with dominant foreign players Boeing and Airbus.
But the aircraft still lacks the crucial US Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) certification that would allow it to fly in US
skies, and most manufacturers do not yet view the COMAC plane as a competitive
threat.
Even so, the Chinese commercial aircraft market is
already Asia’s largest and crucial to aerospace plans over the next decades.
Pictures of the ARJ21 inaugural flight showed a
patriotic spirit among the passengers, with some waving Chinese flags and
signing their names on a memorial banner, flanked by people in panda costumes.
First formally approved by the government in 2002,
the plane was shown to journalists five years later, when officials confidently
predicted deliveries in late 2009.
Chengdu Airlines finally received the aircraft from
manufacturer the Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (COMAC) last November,
and it made several “demonstration” flights without passengers in January.
While the debut commercial flight is a landmark for
COMAC, the ARJ21’s quality and reliability still have to be established to win
over customer and passenger confidence.
The plane can seat 78-90 passengers and has a range
of 2,225-3,700 kilometres (1,380- 2,294 miles).
State-owned COMAC has claimed more than 270 orders
for the ARJ21, mainly from domestic customers.
FIRST INDIGENOUS CHINA AIRCRAFT TAKES TO AIRSPACE
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Tuesday, June 28, 2016
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