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Frank Chen

European pilots have found “no major hardware risks” with the Chinese-made C919 passenger jet during a months-long flight testing process in China, which is now beginning to wrap up, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.
The news indicates that the C919 has taken a step closer to winning a crucial endorsement from European safety regulators, but the sources cautioned that the completion of in-flight testing did not mean that certification was imminent.
The “test drive” by European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) pilots has been highly rigorous, with specialised crews pushing the single-aisle C919 “to extremes” to validate its safety, the sources said.
These flights included manoeuvres like deliberate spins and stalls to test the jet’s structural integrity and gather data that can be checked against established certification specifications.
The C919 – produced by the state-run Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) – is a narrowbody passenger jet that Beijing aims to promote as an alternative to the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 on the global market.
The aircraft has already been in service domestically in China for three years, with Comac delivering 37 of the jets to Chinese carriers to date. But certification from Western regulators is likely to be vital for the jet to compete internationally.
The South China Morning Post reported in January that EASA test pilots had begun flying the C919 in Shanghai. Flight tests are part of the third step of the EASA’s four-step certification process.
Those flights are now mostly complete, though some simulations of system malfunctions had yet to be finished, according to the sources. The tests are designed to examine the aircraft’s backup systems and flight computers.
“Sometimes EASA test pilots had to wait for a particular type of bad weather or temperature and humid conditions to fly the Chinese plane and see how it could perform,” one source said.


Both sources stressed that even once all the test flights are finished, the C919’s long-haul journey towards certification will not be over, as significant work still remains to be done.
Evaluators will need to comb through the mountain of data collected during the tests, and this analysis and discussion will take some time – and may require software tweaks and other follow-up work, they said.
The test flights in China have included a “special” additional segment to check that the Chinese-designed cockpit can be operated smoothly by foreign aviators, especially during an emergency, according to the sources.
The process involved European captains based in China operating C919 simulators, with EASA assessors observing. Those tests were “successfully” completed in May, according to one source.
To uphold its independence, the EASA told its test pilots and technicians dispatched to China to “minimise unnecessary chats and interactions” with their Chinese counterparts and to refrain from giving feedback on site after each test was completed, according to one source.
Florian Guillermet, executive director of the EASA, told French media last year that the C919 certification process would take three to six years to complete.


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European pilots are now wrapping up their long flight testing process for the C919, but it is still unclear when the jet might be certified, sources say


European pilots are now wrapping up their long flight testing process for the C919, but it is still unclear when the jet might be certified, sources say.


EU test pilots find ‘no major hardware risks’ with China’s C919 jet: sources

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}European pilots are now wrapping up their long flight testing process for the C919, but it is still unclear when the jet might be certified, sources say

European pilots are now wrapping up their long flight testing process for the C919, but it is still unclear when the jet might be certified, sources say