Comac's C919 jet to complete assembly by September 2015

Assembly work on China's homegrown narrow body jet, the C919, will take another year and it should make its maiden flight by the end of 2015, Tian Min, chief financial officer of the Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (Comac), told aviation industry leaders at a Comac-organised summit in Shanghai yesterday.

The 168-seat C919 went into the final assembly stage last Friday. The delayed project is China's answer to Boeing and Airbus in the narrow body market. The plane has secured 400 orders from 16 customers, Tian said.

ARJ21, Comac's 70-seat regional jet, has 258 orders and is expected to be certified by the Chinese aviation authority this year, he said, adding "we need to increase the ratio" of Chinese-made jets, which currently accounts for only 11 to 16 per cent of the jets in service in the country.

The mainland is forecast to need at least 4,000 passenger jets over the next 20 years, a market worth more than US$560 billion and which is currently dominated by foreign aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing and Airbus.

The C919 was meant to be China's first indigenously built large plane. Its suppliers include General Electric, Honeywell and Liebherr that provide core parts of the aircraft such as engines, avionics, and electro-mechanics. The aerostructural parts are mainly made by various manufacturing units under the Aviation Corp of China (Avic).

Yu Zemin, deputy general manager of Comac Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing, responsible for the major assembly base outside Shanghai's Pudong airport, said planned production capacity was 70 ARJ21s and 150 C919s a year.