China’s answer to Boeing and Airbus makes first international flight
A Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (Comac) C919 aircraft under assembly at the Comac Shanghai Research and Development Center on May 4, 2017.
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China’s homegrown C919 passenger jet departed on its first scheduled international commercial flight Wednesday, marking a milestone in Beijing’s push to develop an alternative to Boeing and Airbus.
The Air China-operated jet took off from Beijing Capital International Airport bound for Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, just after 3:00 p.m. local time (3:00 a.m. ET), touching down some two hours later, according to FlightRadar24. It marks the first time the narrow-body aircraft has operated beyond Chinese territory.
The Beijing-Ulaanbaatar service is set to operate daily, according to Air China.
The flight marks another step in China’s effort to establish the state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, or COMAC, as a competitor in a global passenger aircraft market dominated by U.S.-based Boeing and Europe’s Airbus.
However, the C919 is still reliant on foreign components and has not received certification from major U.S. or European aviation regulators, limiting its ability to win customers in many overseas markets.
“Production of COMAC’s C919 narrow-body passenger jet still relies heavily on foreign suppliers,” Andreas Mischer, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, or MERICS, told CNBC.
He highlighted the aircraft’s engines, manufactured by CFM International, a joint venture between U.S.-based GE Aerospace and France’s Safran Aircraft Engines.
COMAC also fell short of a “Made in China 2025” goal for domestically-produced large passenger aircraft to capture 10% of China’s domestic market, Mischer said.
Nevertheless, COMAC has increasingly showcased the aircraft overseas. The C919 and smaller C909 made their Dubai Airshow debuts in November 2025, where COMAC said it wanted to deepen ties with the global aviation industry.
The C919 is a single-aisle narrow-body airliner that can carry up to 174 passengers, designed for the same broad market segment as Boeing’s 737 MAX and Airbus’s A320neo.
Can COMAC challenge Boeing and Airbus?
While China is one of the world’s largest aviation markets, giving COMAC a meaningful domestic customer base, the country’s domestic airlines continue to depend on Boeing and Airbus aircraft.
In May, China confirmed an order of 200 Boeing planes, as well as engines and spare parts, demonstrating the country’s continued reliance on U.S.-made commercial jets even as Beijing backs COMAC.
COMAC has built up a substantial order backlog, mainly from Chinese airlines and leasing companies, but production remains relatively small.
Mischer said COMAC had delivered a cumulative 32 C919s by the end of 2025, compared with around 100 narrow-body aircraft delivered by Airbus to China in 2025 alone. COMAC delivered another eight C919s in the first half of this year, he said.
That leaves the manufacturer “a long way” from its goal of producing 200 aircraft annually by 2029, according to Mischer.
Scaling production is only part of the challenge. COMAC also needs to convince airlines it can support the aircraft once they are in service.
Rob Morris, a now-retired aviation analyst, told CNBC that “COMAC’s pace of development and production is simply too slow” to genuinely compete with Airbus and Boeing.
“Whilst the C919 does have potential to impact Airbus and Boeing sales in China…the slow pace of execution means it will take time,“ he said. “I think the reason for this is passenger and airline acceptance.”
“It is not just enough to develop, build and deliver the aircraft, the [original equipment manufacturer] has to provide 24/7/365 in-service support to ensure dispatch reliability of the C919 matches those of the well understood and established A320 and 737. This takes time and is only proven by sustained operation.”
Aircraft production is both complex and vulnerable to supply chain disruptions, with shortages of even relatively minor components capable of preventing a finished jet from being delivered.
“How many parts does it take to build a plane? The answer is all of them,” Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, told CNBC earlier this year. “Even if it’s just fasteners, it means you can’t build the plane.”
The complexity means bottlenecks can emerge several layers down the supply chain, Aboulafia said, with shortages ranging from engines and fuselage components to castings, forgings and fasteners.
Before COMAC can reach global competitiveness, it will need to put its supply chain on more solid footing, significantly bolster production capacity and achieve scale, Mischer noted. “Even then, it will be hard to become fully self-reliant in a product as complicated as a passenger jet.”
Despite those hurdles, the C919 represents a significant achievement for China’s aerospace industry.
“The ability to integrate the vast array of components, systems, and software to make a passenger jet is a feat that only a handful of players worldwide, notably Airbus and Boeing, have managed,” he said.
– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.