China's first long-haul passenger airliner made its debut commercial flight from Shanghai to Beijing. This was reported by the Chinese newspaper China Daily.
The C919, built by the China Commercial Aviation Corporation (Comac), carried 130 passengers. It is designed to push back the dominance of Boeing and Airbus in the market for narrow-body passenger airliners. The Sukhoi Superjet 100 once claimed the same role.
At the same time, as the BBC notes , just like the Russian development, the C919 is largely assembled from Western components. The engines for it are produced by the joint Franco-American company CFM International, and the avionics are produced by the American company Collins Aerospace.
State-subsidized Chinese airline China Eastern Airline has reportedly placed an order for five of the aircraft. Comac plans to produce 150 C919s a year over the next five years. According to representatives of the manufacturer of the airliner, the company has already received more than 1,200 orders for its manufacture. At the same time, the BBC writes that most experts agree that these are not real orders, but only an “expression of interest” from Chinese airlines.
This Chinese airliner made its first test flight in 2017. Unlike China's first passenger aircraft, the ARJ21, it is capable of covering much longer distances and carrying many more passengers.
Earlier it was reported that by the end of 2030 the fleet of Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ-100) aircraft. They are equipped with foreign engines, the “hot part” of which is not repaired in Russia. Such calculations were made by the Irkut Corporation and the United Engine Corporation (both part of Rostec), as Kommersant reported .