Alwaght- China's indigenous C919 passenger jet completed its maiden flight on Friday, as Beijing seeks to enter global aviation market in a move that challenges Airbus and Boeing airliners.
The C919 airplane, which seeks to challenge the market dominance of the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 is a narrow-body twin-engine passenger jet took to the skies of Shanghai on Friday.
The state-owned producer of the plane, Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), says there is a $2 trillion market for the new plane, which was first revealed last November.
A total of 23 foreign and domestic customers have placed orders for 570 planes, the company says.
The jet is a symbol of China's ambitions to muscle into a global jet market estimated to be worth $2 trillion over the next two decades, as well as of Beijing's broader "Made in China 2025" plan to spur home-made products, from medicines to robots.
For a country that only 40 years ago was one of the poorest in the world, the C919 symbolized the industrial might of an emerging superpower — and its dream to dominate a new technological epoch.
“We used to believe that it was better to buy than to build, better to rent than to buy,” President Xi Jinping of China told workers during a recent visit to COMAC. “We need to spend more on researching and manufacturing our own airliners.”
Earlier this week, Russia’s Irkut MC-21 – a competitor in the same market – left the assembly line in preparation for its maiden flight later this month.
