In a hangar on a vast industrial complex near Shanghai’s Pudong airport, the Chinese-made aircraft that harbours the country’s hopes of rivalling the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 is being prepared for its first test flight in May.
The Comac C919 is bounded by a huge Chinese flag and a banner bearing an exhortation from President Xi Jinping: “Focus and get down to work to make China’s first large aircraft fly into the skies.”
More than 30 years after China’s previous attempt to build a large airliner ended in failure — when it abandoned efforts to reverse-engineer a crashed Boeing 707 — Mr Xi’s plan to turn China into an aviation powerhouse is one step closer to fruition.
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