Performance and Reliability of China’s First Home-Grown Passenger Jet Is Yet to Be Determined: Experts

The Chinese regime unveils the C919, its first large passenger plane, in Shanghai on Nov. 2, 2015. STR/AFP/Getty Images

China’s first domestically produced passenger aircraft C919 was grounded temporarily on June 29 and 30, after it was in commercial operation for only one month.

China Eastern Airlines (CEA) owns the C919 passenger jet, which is currently the only aircraft of its kind in commercial operation in China. The CEA replaced the flights with an Airbus A320 for two days.

C919 resumed its scheduled flights on July 1, according to Flightradar24, a global flight tracking app that provides real-time information about aircraft around the world.

It is normal for aircraft to malfunction, an experienced pilot said, but the C919 is a new product assembled from parts supplied by various overseas manufacturers and joint ventures.

Whether the imported and home-made parts are compatible and if the parts needed for ongoing maintenance are readily available will determine the future performance of and reliability of the aircraft, the pilot said.

Mr. Gao Fei is a Chinese-American pilot with 26 years of flying experience and has extensive experience with the culture and management in China’s aviation industry. He also has extensive experience flying the Boeing 737 aircraft in both China and the United States.

Mr. Gao believes that the grounding of the aircraft reveals safety hazards of the airplane.

“Malfunctioning of aircraft is normal, but it is abnormal when the Chinese Communist Party flies the aircraft against safety risks because it wants to blow its own trumpet,” he said in a recent interview with The Epoch Times.

The C919 experienced a failure in the engine thrust reversal in a flight test in February this year, which was caused “by some problems in foreign-origin parts,” according to Hong Kong-based Asia Times.

Home Made or Imported?

The C919 is a narrow-body, twin-engined airliner with 158 to 192 seats developed and made by the Chinese state-run Commercial Aircraft Corporation (Comac). It is designed and built to compete with the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 series, according to the Chinese state-run People’s Daily Monday.

Touted as China’s first homegrown passenger jet, the aircraft made its commercial debut on May 28, 2023, and has since been used for regional flights between China’s eastern metropolitan Shanghai and China’s southwestern populous city of Chengdu in Sichuan Province.

China's first self-developed large passenger jetliner C919 is presented after it rolled off the production line at Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing Co. in Shanghai, China on November 2, 2015. VCG/VCG via Getty Images

Though Comac said it was “independently developed,” the plane’s major components come from various international suppliers, Gao Fei, an experienced aviation expert, told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times.

According to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank, about three-fifths of the C919’s major suppliers are American companies, and one-third of the suppliers are European.

The CSIS’s list (pdf) of C919 major suppliers provides a detailed list of the aircraft components and their overseas manufacturers, including the LEAP-1C engine made by CFM International Inc., a joint venture of U.S. GE and the French company Safran Aircraft Engines; the landing gear made by German Liebherr; hydraulic systems and equipment by U.S. Parker; and auxiliary power units (APU) made by U.S. Honeywell.

Some of these overseas manufacturers have established joint ventures (JV) with Chinese companies, according to the CSIS. For example, Safran Electrical Power and Comac have a joint venture named SAIFEI. The components made by the JVs are dubbed “China-made.”

A commentator for a Chinese think tank believes that C919 cannot be regarded as “home-made.”

Kunlunce, a Beijing-based think tank, published an article in April, stating that C919’s American suppliers account for over 60 percent and European suppliers 30 percent.

“If you buy a pile of parts and assemble them into a bike, you can’t call the bike home-made, right?” wrote the commentator under the pseudonym “Lun Jian Shi Jie.”

“None of the three major parts of a passenger plane—the engine, the avionics, and the landing gear—is made domestically,“ wrote the commentator, ”As the core parts belong to foreign suppliers, C919 has to be grounded because it doesn’t have the spare parts for the repair.”

He added that future avionics upgrades will cost a lot of money as well.

Safety Concerns

“There have been concerns about the safety and reliability of the C919, as seen both in previous validation data and now in actual operational performance after its first flight,” said Mr. Gao in the interview.

“C919 combines various parts from manufacturers around the world,” Mr. Gao noted. “Whether they are compatible with each other, how they perform as a whole, how their maintenance is guaranteed, if the whole maintenance procedure can be performed properly, and if supplies of spare parts are guaranteed—all these are questions.”

“For example, are the CFMI engines and Honeywell’s avionics subject to any technical control by China and Europe? Are there any restrictions imposed on these parts?” Mr. Gao asked, adding that there are more concerns regarding the availability of spare parts and maintenance materials of foreign manufacturers.

The availability of C919’s spare parts is also of concern amid the growing tension between China and the United States.

In June, SCMP reported that the C919 relies on imported parts and technology, adding that the United States has imposed bans on Chinese entities that may divert U.S.-made civil aviation products for military use, as China implements military-civil fusion tactics, which transfers foreign state-of-the-art technologies to the regime’s military.

SCMP reported that three-fifths of the C919’s suppliers are American companies, and another one-third are European companies.

“In fact, there is no guarantee of a sustainable, reliable, and economic stability of C919,” Mr. Gao added.

Yao Cheng, a military commentator and former Lieutenant Colonel Staff Officer of the CCP’s Navy Command who lives in the United States, told Radio Free Asia that the malfunctioning of C919 is a “sensitive” issue.

“Other passenger aircraft can fly as long as an accident does not affect flight safety,” Mr. Yao said, “but once the C919 has an accident, it would be a huge blow to Chinese aircraft manufacturing [industry].”

Comac has secured orders for about 1,200 planes of the C919 model from Chinese and overseas clients, according to the state-run media People’s Daily. Comac has two other models—ARJ21, a smaller aircraft than the C919, and C929, a bigger version than the C919.

So far, China Eastern Airlines hasn’t provided an explanation for the replacement of the aircraft.

China Eastern Airlines didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

Lin Yan contributed to this report.