As China continues to promote its home-grown C919 passenger plane to overseas markets, it could take longer than expected for the aircraft to receive a coveted endorsement from the European Union’s safety regulator. Florian Guillermet, Executive Director of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), said certification for the narrow-body C919 will not be granted this year. “As we informed them officially, the C919 cannot be certified in 2025. We should be certifying the C919 within three to six years,” Guillermet said. “The C919’s reliability and safety have to be proven by more flights, and it is definitely normal for the regulator to have a skeptical and scrutinizing attitude,” Aviation Analyst Li Hanming said.
Following its first commercial flight in May 2023, the plane manufactured by Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) has been in regular use on several domestic routes, transporting over 1 million passengers as of January 2025. The company received at least 300 firm orders from major Chinese airlines in 2024, with the jet now flying commercial routes in mainland China and Hong Kong. The airliner has also made high-profile appearances at international air shows. The C919’s European certification process started four years ago, including two “very productive” years, according to Guillermet of EASA.
The European agency and the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) signed the EU-China Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement in 2019, which reciprocally simplified the approval process for civil aviation aircraft and equipment. That deal should encourage the two regulators to share data on aircraft seeking certification, said Mayur Patel, Asia head at British aviation intelligence firm OAG. European regulators visited Shanghai last July to operate C919 simulators, and gave positive feedback. “Comac is putting a lot of resources, determination and technical means into this certification. I have no doubt the company will succeed,” Guillermet said.
Comac is jockeying for position in the global narrow-body aircraft market with Airbus and Boeing. The single-aisle C919, which can fit up to 192 seats, largely matches the Airbus 320 or Boeing 737 aircraft families in terms of technical capability. Its smaller predecessor, the C909, formerly known as the ARJ21, mostly flies regional routes in China and Southeast Asia. While a three-year wait in Europe is normal, six years would be unusually long, said Eric Lin, head of Greater China research at investment bank UBS. He added it would be especially odd to see such a long delay as several airlines outside China, including Irish budget carrier Ryanair, have expressed interest in the C919, the South China Morning Post reports.
