China's first locally made passenger plane takes flight in Chengdu. (Photo : Getty Images)
China marked a significant progress in the local aviation industry as the country’s first domestically made passenger plane successfully completed a 2-hour flight on Tuesday.
According to CCTV, the airbus Comac ARJ-21 of the Chengdu Airlines flew from Chengdu to Shanghai China carrying 70 passengers.
It has a 90-seater capacity and could carry passengers as far as 2,000 kilometers.
Its chief designer, Wu Xingshi, said that the first-ever passenger plane made in China "filled a 20-year gap" in the country's "regional jet development."
"It offers valuable experience for China's aviation industry, especially in the large civil aircraft area," he added, with some analysts deeming it a symbol of the country's success in mastering the research and design of manufacturing passenger jets locally.
However, not everyone is impressed with the feat, particularly Alberto Riva of the Vice News who believes that the jet itself is a failure.
After citing Wu's statement about the ARJ-21 being a vessel of Chinese "experience," he wrote: "And that's what the jet will end up being: a way for China to gain experience, on the way to possibly competing one day with Western manufacturers of civilian airplanes. But as a commercial proposition, the ARJ-21 is a failure."
According to Riva, the manufacturer of the ARJ-21 only got about 300 orders of the jet which mostly came from Chinese companies and a couple of firms around Asia, Africa, and the GECAS, a leasing company based in the United States.
Riva further compared the ARJ-21's sales to Western jets with the same specs, saying that it is "almost a decade behind schedule."
The article, however, received a lot of criticisms posted in its comments section, with one deeming the analysis somewhat similar to how Nokia and Motorola made fun of China's first-ever brick-like mobile phone.
"When a baby company starts producing its first-ever product, a more mature and [probably] more [sensible] thing to do is to calmly analyze rather than compare it directly to the dominating no.1 player," posted someone named Konporer.
