Thousands of test hours on C919 jet needed before OK

China will ramp up resources to accelerate the approval process for C919, the country's first large domestic passenger plane, to obtain an airworthiness certificate, which may require thousands of test flight hours, the industrial regulator and the aircraft's maker said.

The C919 is scheduled to go through about 729 test projects and 4,200 hours of flight before it obtains the certificate from the Civil Aviation Administration of China. Such a step is imperative for it to enter the commercial market, according to the Commercial Aircraft Corp of China, the C919's manufacturer.

Li Dong, director of the industrial equipment department at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that after C919's successful maiden flight in May, more effort will be made to boost its flight performance, beef up maintenance support and lower its operating cost.