China on Friday announced the first delivery of a new domestically produced passenger plane, with the plane expected to make its commercial debut early next year.
Beijing hopes the C919 commercial airliner will challenge foreign models such as the Boeing 737 MAX and Airbus A320, although most of its components come from abroad.
The first model of the narrow-body plane, which seats 164 passengers, was handed over to China Eastern Airlines during a ceremony at the airport in Shanghai, state media reported.
The move marks “an important milestone” in China’s aviation industry, state broadcaster CCTV said.
Footage broadcast on Friday by CCTV showed a China Eastern flag plane parked on a rainy airport and gave a glimpse inside the plane’s cabin.
The Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (COMAC) has passed the plane “a memorial key to the world’s first C919,” CCTV reported.
COMAC said at an airshow last month that it had secured orders for 300 C919s, but did not say whether the orders had been fully confirmed and gave no information about the number of deals or delivery dates.
But if the orders go through, they will take the number of known deals for the C919 to over 1,100, based on figures from previous COMAC statements.
Domestic media previously reported that four aircraft are expected to be delivered to Eastern China – the country’s largest fleet by passenger numbers – by the end of the year before being put into operation in the first quarter. of 2023.
China signed a deal for Airbus planes worth $17 billion earlier this year, and the company began production of its A321 model in the northeastern city of Tianjin last month.
The Boeing 737 MAX has been grounded in China since 2019 after two fatal accidents, although the aerospace giant said in July that it could be approved for delivery by Chinese regulators this year.
But US-China trade tensions and China’s worst commercial airline disaster earlier this year involving a Boeing 737-800 have slowed progress.
