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China’s rival to Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 completes its first pre-delivery Shanghai test flight ahead of handover to customer

  • Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (Comac), the state-owned jet maker of C919, said the plane completed a three-hour test flight in Shanghai on Saturday
  • The test flight came at a time when Shanghai has yet to emerge from its lockdown of the Covid-19

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The Comac C919, China’s first single-aisle passenger jet, took off from Pudong International Airport in Shanghai on November 10, 2017. Photo: AFP.
Enoch Yiu

China’s C919 aircraft completed its first pre-delivery test flight in Shanghai, taking its maker a step closer towards offering a substitute to Boeing’s 737 and Airbus’ A320 single-aisle commercial aircraft in the global aviation market.

The Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (Comac) completed a three-hour test flight at the Pudong International Airport in Shanghai on Saturday morning, according to a statement on its website.

“This marked a successful test flight of the first C919 plane ahead of its delivery to the first customer,” Comac said. “The flight test completed all the scheduled tasks, and the aircraft performed well and was in good condition.”

The successful test flight is a boost for state-owned Comac, which received 28 customer orders for as many as 815 C919 aircraft, according to its website. The test showed how Shanghai’s authorities are determined to get business activities back on their feet, after sending the city into lockdown since April 1.
The official launch of Comac’s C919 on November 2, 2015 in Pudong, Shanghai. Photo: Chen Xiao
The official launch of Comac’s C919 on November 2, 2015 in Pudong, Shanghai. Photo: Chen Xiao

As many as 3,000 of Comac’s staff had been working under “closed-loop” conditions – where they had to undergo daily tests for Covid-19 and sleep on site to ensure zero contact with outsiders – to get the aircraft to its flight-ready stage, the manufacturer said.

Shanghai’s hometown carrier China Eastern Airlines is poised to take delivery of five of the C919 aircraft, bought at a catalogue price of US$99 million each in a March 2021 agreement. China’s third-largest carrier plans to use the new aircraft on domestic routes from Pudong to Beijing, Guangzhou. Shenzhen and Chengdu, China Eastern said.
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