Air China intends to be world’s first user of C929 wide-body passenger aircraft

(Photo: Courtesy of Air China)

Air China said on Tuesday that it had signed a framework agreement with Shanghai-based Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (COMAC) for the C929 wide-body aircraft, and the carrier expects to be the first user of the aircraft in the world.

The deal was announced on the first day of the 15th China International Aerospace Expo in Zhuhai, South China's Guangdong Province.

The C929 wide-body passenger aircraft has a seating capacity of 280 and a range of 12,000 kilometers. Preliminary design work is underway.

Air China has introduced two single-aisle C919 aircraft and 31 C909 regional jets for commercial flights. Both models were developed by COMAC.

On August 28, Air China received the first C919 aircraft. After completing its first commercial flight on September 10, the plane was deployed for routes of Beijing-Shanghai and Beijing-Hangzhou.

As of October, the C919 aircraft had completed 174 flights, safely flown 389 hours, and transported 23,800 passengers.

The C919 has a smaller seating capacity than the C929 and is being operated by three domestic airlines.

According to COMAC, 12 C919 aircraft have been delivered, and as of October, they had operated for 13,000 hours and carried 700,000 passengers.

COMAC also said on Tuesday that the domestically developed regional jetliner ARJ21, which has a new name of C909, has secured 70 orders from Hainan Airlines and Colorful Guizhou Airlines.

Also on Tuesday, COMAC predicted that by 2043, China's airlines will take delivery of 9,323 jetliners.

Among the total will be 821 regional passenger planes, 6,881 single-aisle passenger planes, and 1,621 dual-aisle passenger planes.

By 2043, China's civil aviation fleet will stand at 10,061 aircraft, accounting for 20.6 percent of the global passenger aircraft fleet. China is expected to become the world's largest single air transport market, COMAC said.

The Lingang Special Area of China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone is striving to build itself into a civil aviation industry cluster with complete key industrial chains and complete industrial elements.

In October, 15 key aviation industry projects signed contracts in the Lingang Special Area involving core industry links such as airframe structure, composite materials, and avionics systems. The total value of the signed projects exceeds 26 billion yuan ($3.6 billion), which will provide a stronger impetus for the development of the civil aviation industry.