China Eastern Airlines outlines development of C919 on eve of inaugural international flight

May 30th 2024

Print Friendly

China’s C919 will debut its international commercial operations on June 1 with a China Eastern Airlines (CEA) charter flight between Shanghai Hongqiao and Hong Kong. Read More » CEA chairman, Wang Zhiqing, told Mainland news platform, Yicai, that since the narrow-body arrived at the airline a year ago, CEA has developed a comprehensive commercial operation support process for the aircraft. CEA’s fleet has been introduced to commercial flying in two phases: an initial ten months from last year and a normalized operation stage that commenced a month ago. CEA has a C919 Safe Operation Management Manual, established the C919 Innovation Studio Alliance and developed a C919 pilot and flight attendant training program, the airline said. More than 60 pilots and 170 flight attendants have obtained C919 flight qualifications and 14,000 staff have completed ground service support training, the airline added. CEA’s C919s have operated 2,181 flights clocking up 6,090 hours of flying time and carried almost 300,000 passengers. Primary operational data shows passenger kilometer revenue for C919 flights is higher than other aircraft in the same class and that the aircraft’s daily CEA utilization rate is improving. CEA ordered 100 C919s last September. Air China and China Southern Airlines each have committed to 100 of the type. Other customers of the C919 include Hainan Airlines, Suparna Airlines, Tibet Airlines and Urumqi Air. COMAC has orders for near 1,000 of the type.