First Chinese-built passenger jet takes off for maiden flight

PanARMENIAN.Net - The first Chinese-built passenger jet has taken to the skies for a politically charged maiden flight that authorities claimed would propel the country into a new era of aviation, The Guardian reports.

The C919, a twin-engine airliner designed to compete with the Airbus 320 and Boeing 737, took off from Shanghai’s Pudong International airport just after 2pm on Friday, May 5 and landed back there again 80 minutes later.

The symbolic flight, which the government has celebrated as further evidence of China’s rise, was broadcast live on state-controlled television.

The jet is the work of the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac), a state-run company founded in 2008 with the specific mission of producing the country’s first commercially viable passenger jet – something Chairman Mao tried but failed to achieve during the 1970s.

Several of the plane’s key components are imported – the C919 features German landing gear, Franco-American engines and an Austrian interior – and one aviation analyst told Bloomberg the manufacturer’s claims to have produced a genuinely made-in-China jet were questionable.

Nevertheless, the C919’s 79-minute debut was greeted with an outpouring of patriotism and pride.

Gu Bin, an aviation expert from China’s Aviation Industry Cooperation, a state-run aerospace firm, predicted the aircraft would “rip a hole” in the duopoly enjoyed by Airbus and Boeing.