Aviation industry to fly on wings of C919

Editor's note: China's passenger jet C919 is due to make its debut flight at Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Friday. Gao Zhenghong, a professor at the School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, who led the team that designed the airfoil for the C919, explains the importance of the aircraft to China Daily's Zhang Zhouxiang.

Many people have pinned hopes on the C919, because it is the first domestically-built large passenger plane and could be put into operation between 2020 and 2022. Can you name a few advanced technologies it uses?

I will give only one example. An essential quality index of modern passenger jets is the percentage of third-generation aluminum-lithium (Al-Li) alloy, a common material in the aircraft-making industry, and advanced composite materials used in a plane. Al-Li alloy comprises 8.8 percent and advanced composite materials 12 percent of the total materials used in the C919. And on both scores, the C919 is an improvement on the ARJ21, another domestically designed and built commercial aircraft.