BEIJING, Might 26 (Reuters) – China Japanese Airways, the preliminary buyer for the nation’s homegrown narrow-body jet C919, will launch the airplane’s first business flight on Sunday, the service’s app confirmed on Friday.
The C919 flight will take off as flight quantity MU9191 at 10:45 a.m. Beijing time (0245 GMT) from Shanghai Hongqiao Worldwide Airport and arrive in Beijing Capital Airport at 1:10 p.m.
It can fly a second time on Sunday afternoon again from Beijing to Shanghai, the app additionally confirmed.
The business operation of the C919 marks a milestone within the nation’s hopes that the airplane will break the longtime Airbus-Boeing duopoly on this planet’s airline manufacturing trade.
Manufactured by Business Aviation Corp of China (COMAC) to rival the Airbus (AIR.PA) A320neo and Boeing (BA.N) 737 MAX single-aisle jet households, the C919 has made many flights with out passengers.
The airline and producer have given its first business flight little publicity. However hypothesis that the flight would occur on Sunday arose on Chinese language social media after Shanghai Stamp Accumulating Company launched a photograph of a commemorative stamp for the C919 flight that bore a Might 28 date.
China Japanese has not stated who will fly on the flight and didn’t reply to Reuters requests for touch upon Friday.
On-line customers stated the airline opened an appointment channel earlier this yr on its app for the general public to ebook tickets.
China Japanese signed a contract for 5 C919s in March 2021 within the first business deal for the airplane. The Shanghai-headquartered service obtained its first C919, numbered B-919A, in December and started 100 hours of empty plane verification take a look at flights.
China’s Xinhua state information company had stated final yr that the C919 would make its first business flight within the spring.
The 164-seat plane comes with a two-class cabin structure, consisting of enterprise and financial system seats.
Though the C919 is assembled in China, it depends closely on Western parts, together with engines and avionics, from firms together with GE (GE.N), Safran (SAF.PA) and Honeywell Worldwide (HON.O).
Reporting by Albee Zhang, Sophie Yu and Brenda Goh; modifying by Gerry Doyle and Jason Neely
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