China’s C919 airliner will roll out and perform taxi tests before the end of this year, but the first flight will likely not take place until 2016, according to Dennis Scott, assistant chief designer at the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac). Speaking at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London last week, Scott, who is a British aeronautical engineer, issued new details on the program, as well as on China’s plan to produce commercial aircraft engines. A veteran of many Western aerospace programs, Scott joined Comac in 2011 to advise senior leadership on Western development methodologies and organization.
The wing-to-fuselage join for the prototype C919 took place in December, and the static and fatigue test articles now follow the prototype down the production line, Scott reported. Comac completed structural tests to validate the design a year ago; like Comac’s ARJ21 regional airliner, nearly all of the structure consists of domestically produced parts. Avionics and system integration for the C919 has started, and Honeywell has begun translating the approved control laws into fly-by-wire software. The cockpit layout and sidestick controllers “follow the Airbus philosophy,” Scott noted. A second assembly line for the C919 is being built on reclaimed land at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport, where plans call for construction of a fifth runway dedicated to flight test for Comac.
Construction has started on another huge facility south of Shanghai for Avic’s Commercial Engine Company. Scott briefly mentioned the three indigenous commercial engines that the Chinese conglomerate plans to develop. It plans to launch the CJ-500 as an alternative to the GE Aviation CF34 powerplants on the ARJ21; it intends the CJ-1000 to power narrowbody airliners, and it could serve as an alternative to the CFM Leap-1C powerplants on the C919. Schedules call for a demonstration engine to run in 2018 ahead of certification sometime between 2022 and 2025. Finally, the largest of the three engines—the CJ-2000—would power widebody airliners. Avic plans to run a demonstration engine in 2022, ahead of certification sometime between 2025 and 30. The new head of Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation, Yuri Slyusar, recently described in Moscow plans for a joint venture with China to produce a widebody airliner.
Meanwhile, Chinese authorities certified the country’s first indigenous airliner—the 78-seat ARJ21—on December 28 last year, after a flight-test campaign that amassed 5,258 hours. Scott explained that the exceptionally high total, compared with Western equivalent programs, resulted from “a very conservative approach” that placed much less reliance on simulation.
Comac holds orders for 274 ARJ21s, but entry into commercial service will be slow, Scott implied. Plans call for initial production examples to amass operating experience with Comac-owned Chengdu Airlines. The FAA has monitored the ARJ21 program, but “there are still some issues” to resolve before the regional jet could win certification by the West, Scott noted.