Photo: Courtesy of COMAC

Jinpeng Airlines, also known as Suparna Airlines, said that it will receive its first C919 aircraft in the fourth quarter of this year, making it the first private carrier in the world to operate the domestically developed plane, the Global Times learned on Sunday.

The carrier plans to operate 30 C919 aircraft. It has built a center for the planes and finished two phases of training for 37 maintenance and engineering personnel. The carrier will begin training for flight attendants and security personnel at the end of August.

Suparna Airlines said it has had continuous cooperation with Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (COMAC) in terms of engineering technology, aviation material support, management and personnel training.

In the future, the carrier will operate a C919 fleet exclusively.

The C919 is a large civilian jet aircraft developed in accordance with international civil aviation regulations and with independent intellectual property rights, and it is regarded as a model to grab a share of the global civilian aviation market, which is dominated by Boeing and Airbus.

In 2022, China Eastern Airlines officially took delivery of the world's first C919, making it the world's first operator of the plane. It has six C919s in service on four routes. 

Major domestic airlines like Air China and China Southern Airlines have each placed additional orders for 100 C919 aircraft. 

Global orders for the plane have exceeded 1,000 aircraft.

COMAC continues to optimize and upgrade the aircraft. At the Singapore Airshow in February, Tibet Airlines ordered 40 plateau-type C919 aircraft, becoming the launch customer for this version. 

Continued orders for the C919 mean that the narrow-body passenger aircraft market, now shared by Boeing and Airbus, has a third competitor. However, compared with the current delivery speed of Boeing and Airbus, the production and delivery pace of the C919 is still far behind.

COMAC only delivered four C919s to China Eastern Airlines in 2023, and another two in the first half of this year.

In comparison, Airbus delivered 142 civilian aircraft in the first quarter of this year, including 116 A320 series aircraft that compete with the C919 aircraft. The monthly output of the Boeing 737 series aircraft in the first quarter reached 38, according to yicai.com.

The delivery pace of any new aircraft expands from small batches to large batches, and the increase in production will also be a slow process, Qi Qi, a market insider, told the Global Times on Sunday. But he believed that the delivery volume of the C919 will increase faster. 

Zhang Yujin, a vice general manager of COMAC, said in January last year that the production of C919 large aircraft will expand at a faster pace and seize market share, and he said that the domestic large aircraft business will transition from comprehensive research and development to the industrialization stage.

He said that the yearly production of the C919 will hit 150 units in the next five years.