Cutting-edge features help C909 fly even higher

With China mass producing homegrown aircraft such as the C919 and C909, ushering in a series-development stage, a new era has started for the nation's commercial aircraft development featuring uniqueness, new energy and speed qualities, said an official at Commercial Aircraft Corp of China.

"The domestically made passenger aircraft represents the industry's depth, breadth and bright future," said Chen Yong, chief engineer of COMAC, during an annual forum held by Fudan University's School of Management on Feb 16.

According to Chen, who is also the chief designer of China's regional C909 jet, the aircraft is designed and tested by China in accordance with the highest and latest international standards.

The jet was formerly known as the ARJ21, or Advanced Regional Jet for the 21st Century.

As a pioneer of made-in-China passenger jet technology, Chen has led his team to achieve historic accomplishments since 2003. The team developed China's first regional airliner from scratch.

Over the years, Chen has played a role as the key architect in spearheading the aircraft's upgrade and series development. "We've made the 'triple jump' in developing the C909, which is a technological breakthrough, commercial breakthrough and ecological breakthrough," Chen said.

Since its maiden commercial flight on June 28, 2016, the C909 series has delivered 160 aircraft as of the end of January. A total of 644 flight routes, both domestic and international, have been operated, and 580,000 hours of safe flights were conducted, delivering nearly 20 million passenger trips, according to its manufacturer COMAC.

"The C909 has secured its dominance in China's regional aircraft market by accounting for 70 percent of the market share in terms of volume. Up to 60 percent of the world's similar aircraft models delivered last year were C909s," said Chen.

Such achievements were made with a strong focus on safety, including airworthiness safety and flight safety, as well as an unwavering pursuit to strike a balance between safety and economy, according to Chen.

"Stalling and ice formation are the two greatest challenges to overcome in our path to achieving airworthiness safety, and we have conducted more than 8,200 stalling test flights," said Chen.

"And to ensure flight safety, we have consistently made innovative developments and designs, including quiet and dark cockpits and intelligent piloting instrument systems for pilots," Chen added.

As the development of the C909 heads toward scale and series production, Chen said the research and development team has put a particular focus on adapting to the latest technologies and industrial upgrades.

He said the future of passenger aircraft development will follow three mega trends — developing variant models, adopting clean and low carbon emission energies, as well as exploiting supersonic aircraft.

The C909 is currently the regional jet with the most variants including business jets, cargo planes, medical aircraft, rescue command aircraft and firefighting models among others, according to public information.

COMAC has built C909 production lines with an annual production capacity of 50 aircraft, and the company said there are 770 aircraft in pending orders.