Before entering commercial service, the C919 is undergoing 100 hours worth of test flights. After a brief hiatus for the Lunar New Year holiday, the flight-validation process resumed on January 28 with a flight from Shanghai to Nanchang, Jiangxi province.

The maker of the C919, the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac), also has a regional jet – the ARJ21 – that has been in service since 2015 but has yet to be certified by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

This is despite there being bilateral aviation-safety agreements set up among the two regulators and the CAAC for a certification validation that would allow Chinese-made aerospace products to be exported to the US and the EU based on mutual recognition of the certification process.

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In particular, regulators will work together to validate the airworthiness of an aircraft design, known as a “type” certification.

“Whether the C919 gets the nod from the FAA or EASA is not really a concern for Comac, as it can be sold and flown to many other markets that don’t fall under those two jurisdictions,” said Shukor Yusof, founder of aviation advisory firm Endau Analytics.

“Of course, there’s a stigma to anything that’s made in China, but the high-speed trains have proved very reliable and safe. China-made products can be world-class. This applies to airplanes, too, although I suspect there will continue to be scepticism on safety issues.”

Richard Evans, a senior consultant at Ascend by Cirium, said the primary market of the C919, which is designed to compete with Boeing’s 737 and Airbus’ A320, is China.

“I think it’s unlikely the ARJ21 will ever do so, but it is possible that Comac will look to get the C919 certified by the EASA or FAA one day. I don’t think it will be a priority, however, as it would presumably take a very long time to achieve,” Evans said.

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C919 takes off: China shows off its first home-grown passenger jet

C919 takes off: China shows off its first home-grown passenger jet

In a statement issued by the CAAC in 2017, the Chinese aviation regulator said it “encourages and supports Chinese enterprises to apply for the FAA’s type recognition, such as for the ARJ21 and C919 of Comac”, and “for a bilateral document on airworthiness, the most important part is the scope and procedures of mutual recognition”.

“The FAA has been shadowing the CAAC for years on these type certificates, because the goal was to validate each other’s type certificates, providing technical assistance and experts to Comac and Shanghai where they built the aircraft,” said Michael Daniel, a former FAA certification expert.

The status of the shadowing process between the FAA and CAAC, which involves inspections and audits, has not been updated publicly. Daniel said the pandemic is likely to have been among the factors slowing down the process.

Reuters reported in September that the EASA said it has been working for years on a certification validation process for the C919 with Comac, in parallel with the CAAC’s work. However, the EU aviation agency did not comment on when the validation process would be completed, according to Reuters.

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A spokeswoman at the FAA deferred questions over the status of the certification validation for the ARJ21 and C919 to the Chinese government, while the EASA did not respond. The CAAC and Comac also did not respond to faxed questions on the status of making the ARJ21 and C919 available in the US and EU markets.

Indonesia recognises China’s type certification, without going through a vigorous certification-validation process that is required by the FAA and the EASA, according to Daniel.

“The smaller authorities may not have the same resources as the larger FAA and EASA organisations and have to rely on sampling and/or focused meetings. However, each authority is accepting the same liability for validating type certification and supplemental type certification,” Daniel said.

Supplemental type certification is issued when an applicant has received FAA approval to modify an aeronautical product from its original design.

While safety is the priority for airworthiness certification, company ownership and geopolitical influence can also play a role when it comes to selling planes, according to analysts.

“Indonesia has close ties with China, reflected during Covid where vaccines from Sinovac were provided by the Chinese. Apart from obvious geopolitical gains, Indonesia is also leaning towards China economically,” Yusuf said.

In 2021, bilateral trade between China and Indonesia grew by 58.6 per cent from the previous year to US$124.4 billion, with Chinese exports increasing by 48.1 per cent to US$60.7 billion and imports jumping by 70.1 per cent to US$63.8 billion, official Chinese data showed.

Indonesia is also China’s second-largest investment destination in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, after Singapore.

The C919 has arrived at a time when there is growing demand for better regulatory oversight in commercial aviation, particularly in the wake of two crashes involving Boeing’s 737 MAX planes that killed 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019.

“In some cases, the validation of a type certificate product or supplemental type certificate product may be accomplished within a few weeks. However, when there is a major accident, it may cause the authorities to take a step back and review the validation process, as we’ve seen with the Boeing 737 MAX certification,” Daniel said.

Evans at Ascend by Cirium said there may be a long way to go for Comac’s plane design, quality and service to become more competitive globally.

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“It is difficult to assess how competitive the ARJ21 is, compared with other types, without full information about fuel-consumption data or information about maintenance costs and other items,” Evans said. “However, the type is not powered by the latest generation of engines and is likely to be heavier than more modern regional aircraft.

“There are also concerns around ongoing product support of Chinese aircraft, as past experience suggests that maintaining high levels of in-service availability may be difficult.”