CHINA ACAC ARJ-21

摘要

The regional jet airliner is the one major civil aircraft category which is, perhaps, perfectly suited both to China's geography and to the country's new economic climate, in which domestic air travel is seen as likely to expand rapidly in the next two decades. With demand for air travel calculated to be huge in this time-frame, China will not wish to have to import all the aircraft it will need to supply this growing market. There are 50 new airports scheduled for construction over the next five years and feeder traffic from regional jets is forecast to grow by 12% annually in China over the next 20 years. Against this background the ARJ-21 (Advanced Regional Jet for the 21st Century) was launched by AVIC-1 (China Aviation Industrial Corporation 1) in November 2000, designed to carry a nominal load of between 60 to 99 passengers in a five-abreast configuration. The baseline aircraft (ARJ-21-700) will be laid out for 78 passengers, while a later, stretched variant (ARJ-21-900) will offer 98 seats. The aircraft follows attempts by China to team with Airbus and the former Daimler-Benz organisation to develop a new regional jet, but after disappointments with these proposals, the country has decided to go ahead on its own and holds the intellectual properly rights on the ARJ-21 design.