HH-200 commercial cargo drone completes debut flight

The HH-200, a domestically developed commercial unmanned aerial transport system, is seen after accomplishing its debut flight on Wednesday morning in Weinan, Shaanxi province. LI YIBO/XINHUA

The HH-200, a new large cargo drone built by Aviation Industry Corp of China, the country's leading aircraft manufacturer, made its debut flight on Wednesday, AVIC said in a news release.

An HH-200 prototype took off from an airport in Weinan, Shaanxi province, at 9:35 am and stayed in the air for 15 minutes before landing at the airport, the State-owned conglomerate said.

During the flight test, all aircraft systems functioned normally. The drone was in good condition and completed all planned maneuvers, it said.

The HH-200 is a type of commercial unmanned cargo plane developed by AVIC Xi'an Aircraft Industry Group. It is the latest freight drone model to have emerged as a result of the nation's flourishing express delivery industry and the government's efforts to make full use of China's low-altitude airspace.

According to designers, the HH-200 is 12.2 meters long and 16.8 meters wide, and is able to carry payloads of up to 1.5 metric tons.

The twin-engine model has been designed with a maximum cruising speed of 310 kilometers per hour and a top range of 2,360 km. It has a standard inner space of 12 cubic meters available for cargo, which can be expanded to 18 cubic meters.

Meng Fantao, technical director of the HH series, said that the HH-200 is designed in accordance with civil aviation standards, featuring intelligent autonomous flight and artificial intelligence-powered obstacle avoidance systems.

It boasts a service life of 50,000 flight hours and 15,000 takeoffs and landings, with a full life-cycle operating cost of 4.7 yuan (68 US cents) per ton-kilometer — only one-third that of manned aircraft with the same carrying capacity, according to Meng.

In addition, the HH-200 adopts a user-friendly configuration for loading and unloading. Two operators can complete cargo loading and unloading in just five minutes, he said.

The drone can take off and land on runways as short as 500 meters and at high-altitude airports above 4,200 meters, and can withstand extreme temperatures ranging from freezing cold of — 40 C to scorching heat of 50 C.

The researcher noted that the unmanned transport plane can help to deliver goods to mountainous areas, islands, snowy regions and plateaus. It can be rapidly reconfigured for other applications including emergency rescue, forest fire fighting, weather modification, aerial remote sensing, and agricultural and forestry plant protection, he added.

According to Meng, the HH-200 has secured a total of 20 orders of intent so far, and the company will carry out in-depth cooperation with express delivery enterprises to jointly promote the commercial application of the HH series of drones.

In addition to the HH-200, AVIC has designed and tested several other cargo drone models, such as the HH-100 and the TP2000.