Regarding the COMAC C909 aircraft, it is known that from January 15 to January 24, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam sent a working delegation to work directly with COMAC and the Civil Aviation Administration of China in Shanghai (China) to survey and learn about the overview of techniques, operations, maintenance, and design, manufacturing, testing standards as well as the certification process for the ARJ21-700 (C909) aircraft.

After the process of researching, comparing and contrasting the standards, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam has sent a preliminary report to the Ministry of Construction.

The report said that COMAC is currently producing the ARJ21-700 (C909) aircraft. This aircraft has been granted a Type Certificate and a Production Certificate by the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

As of January 7, 2025, COMAC has delivered 160 C909 aircraft to 12 airlines (including 11 Chinese airlines and 1 Indonesian airline from 2022).

The total accumulated flight hours of C909 is more than 550,000 flight hours with more than 330,000 takeoffs and landings and the total number of passengers transported is more than 19 million passengers.

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COMAC aircraft at Con Dao airport in March 2024. Photo: COMAC

Airlines operating the C909 aircraft include Chinese companies (Chengdu Airlines 30 aircraft, China Southern 33 aircraft, Air China 33 aircraft, China Eastern 26 aircraft, China Express 11 aircraft, Genghis Khan Airlines 7 aircraft, COMAC Express 6 aircraft, Jiangxi Air 5 aircraft, China Flight General Aviation 2 aircraft, YTO Cargo 1 aircraft, Longhao Airlines 1 aircraft) and Indonesia's TransNusa (3 aircraft).

“Regarding China's safety regulations system (CAAC Regulations), the parts are set up similarly to the parts of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),” the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam emphasized.

No serious accidents

According to COMAC's report data, there have been no accidents or serious incidents with the C909 aircraft since it entered service.

“In 2024, the average daily flight time of the C909 aircraft will be around 5.2 hours (block time) with dispatch reliability of around more than 99%.

Also in 2024, the C909 fleet flew about 194,000 hours with more than 135,000 sorties, of which 509 interruptions included 131 flights canceled for mechanical reasons.

The rate of technical disruptions was 3.77 per 1,000 flights, and the cancellation rate was 0.97 per 1,000 flights,” the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam reported.

With the collected results compared with CAAC standards with FAA and EASA of the US and Europe, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam proposed to recognize Chinese design and manufacturing standards as the basis for facilitating civil aviation activities in the context of aircraft shortage.

To put COMAC aircraft into operation, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam proposed to amend a number of articles of the Decree regulating conditional business lines and occupations in the field of civil aviation and a number of articles of the Circular on the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations in the field of aircraft and aircraft operations in the direction of recognizing China's airworthiness certification standards as the basis for importing aircraft into Vietnam.

According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, after ensuring legal regulations on recognition of airworthiness certification standards, the Authority will carry out the process of recognizing the Type Certificate (TC) for COMAC aircraft.

Previously, at the seminar "Prime Minister with Chinese enterprises" held on February 28, Mr. Dam Van Canh, Member of the Board of Directors of Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), assessed that promoting in-depth cooperation with Vietnam in the field of civil aviation has always been the core strategy and aspiration of COMAC.

According to Mr. Dam Van Canh, currently under the direction of the Ministry of Transport (now the Ministry of Construction) and the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, all preparations for COMAC's C909 aircraft leasing cooperation with Vietjet Air have been completed.