Comac expects 100 C919 orders

SINGAPORE: Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (Comac), maker of the nation's first narrow-body passenger plane, the C919, aims to win around 100 orders for the aircraft by the year-end as it challenges Boeing Co and Airbus SAS.

Most contracts are expected to come from domestic customers, Yuan Wenfeng, Comac's deputy general manager of the program management department, said yesterday in an interview at the Singapore Air Show. The company also plans to complete the preliminary design for the plane by the end of the year, he said.

Comac expects to sell more than 2,000 C919s over the next two decades, Yuan said, as China, the world's fastest-growing major aviation market, tries to end its reliance on Boeing and Airbus. The C919 will compete with Boeing's 737 and Airbus's A320, the planemakers' two bestselling models.