After a 30-year suspension on the drawing board, China will resume planning the manufacture of a jumbo aircraft in its new five-year program (2006-2010) in the hope of realizing its dream to meet the country's growing demand for air travel.
Premier Wen Jiabao said last Sunday in his report on government work that China will start making jumbo aircraft before the end of the 11th Five-Year Program period (2006- 2010). This is the first time the idea has been brought up since an early attempt was aborted in the 1980s.
The jumbo aircraft project will speed technology advances in China's aviation industry and promote the development of secondary sectors, said an insider who asked not to be named.
Jumbo aircraft generally refers to airliners with a capacity of more than 150 seats at a range of up to 4,000 kilometers.
Building a jumbo aircraft is feasible, said Prof. Guan Zhidong with
Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. While China already has the elementary technologies to build a jumbo aircraft it will still require international cooperation, said Guan.
China started to build jumbo aircraft in 1970, just two years after Europe's Airbus went into production. China's first jumbo aircraft named "Yunshi" made its virgin flight successfully in 1980 and but failed to gain a foothold in China.
"If the 'Yunshi' project had not been halted, China would be ranked as one of the countries with a first-class aviation industry." said Hu Xitao, a former official of China's Aviation Ministry.
With air travel soaring by 95 percent in the past five years, China has the second largest civil aviation market after the United States.
Boeing predicts that China will need more than 2,600 new airliners, mostly large aircraft, in the next two decades, which will be worth 213 billion US dollars.
Insiders hold that China should first aim at filling the demand of the domestic market with smaller aircraft and gradually achieve its goal of making jumbo aircraft with international cooperation.
Since the end of 2005, the ARJ 21, China's regional jet, has been undergoing test flights and its is expected to be put in service in 2008. So far, 41 orders have been received for the ARJ21.
The third "Xinzhou60," another middle-scale jet aircraft manufactured by China, was delivered to Zimbabwe last year. The Xinzhou60 has received 20 orders from foreign countries.
China has worked in active cooperation with international aviation companies to produce aircraft parts, which have laid a technological basis for China's jumbo aircraft manufacturing.
It is estimated that about one quarter of Airbus airliner parts and a third of Boeing's parts are manufactured in China.
"I hope one day that China's pilots will fly the skies in jumbo aircraft made by their own country," said Li Jiaxiang, president of the China National Aviation Holding Company echoing a wish shared by many of his peers here.
