Biennial air present opens to the general public for the primary time because the onset of the COVID-pandemic in 2020.
China’s C919 jetliner is being showcased at Asia’s largest airshow, as its Beijing-backed producer seeks consumers for the nation’s first homegrown passenger jet.
Chinese state-run aerospace agency COMAC has touted the C919 as a challenger to the A320 and the 737 MAX, manufactured, respectively, by long-standing business leaders Airbus and Boeing.
The C919 made its inaugural flight outdoors China on Sunday at a media occasion forward of the Singapore Airshow, which opened to the general public for the primary time because the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
China’s Tibet Airlines mentioned on the sidelines of the present on Tuesday that it had finalised an order for 40 of the narrow-body jets, that are designed to hold as much as 192 passengers and journey as much as 3,500 miles (5,644km).
The C919, which has been flying commercially in China since May, has to date solely been authorised to fly in its residence nation.
The biennial air present, which has greater than 1,000 firms from some 50 international locations in attendance this yr, comes as Asia’s aviation sector is bouncing again from a number of years of dire enterprise circumstances as a result of pandemic.
International air visitors recovered to just about 89 p.c of pre-pandemic ranges in 2023, with the remaining hole principally the results of China’s gradual exit from pandemic curbs, in accordance with International Air Transport Association (IATA) information.
Asia-Pacific airways noticed the largest rise amongst areas, posting a 126 p.c rise in visitors in comparison with 2022, in accordance with the IATA.
Other plane anticipated to be displayed in Singapore embrace Airbus’s A350-1000 and the US Air Force’s B-52 Stratofortress.
US-based Boeing isn’t presenting any business plane because it grapples with the fallout of January’s near-catastrophe through which a 737 MAX 9 Alaska Airlines jet misplaced a door-sized part of the fuselage in mid-flight.
Russian firms that attended earlier reveals, together with Russian Helicopters and Irkut, are usually not collaborating this yr amid the conflict in Ukraine.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/2/20/chinas-c919-jetliner-gets-international-debut-at-singapore-airshow?traffic_source=rss
