About 60 percent of the newly launched passenger jet C919 was made in China, far higher than the initial estimate, according a domestic media report.
The report also noted that the C919 will eventually be 100 percent locally made.
When the C919 project was launched, Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), C919's maker, said that it would be acceptable if more than 10 percent of the jet was locally made, as the domestic workers didn't have experience in the manufacturing of a large aircraft since the Shanghai Y-10 in the 1970s, the cyol.com reported on Friday.
However, the C919 achieved a localization rate of nearly 60 percent and received 570 orders after it was rolled off the production line, the report said.
Zheng Xiaohui, deputy director of the department of plane stability characteristics and control laws at the Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute (SADRI), said that it was hard to design the control laws because it was the first time for them to do it.
"It would be much easier to design control laws for follow-up aircraft models," Zheng said.
As for the parts that couldn't be manufactured in China, they were either made by joint ventures between domestic and overseas firms or imported.
The report also said that the jet would be 100 percent locally made in the future, and it was made clear to every overseas supplier that their products would be localized gradually in the end.
The cyol.com report also stressed that the follow-up aircraft models of the C919 including C929 and C939 are also being researched.
The report cited Zhang Chi from the Beijing Aeronautical Science & Technology Research Institute as saying that he and his team are currently researching a flight model called "spirit sparrow," which is an autonomous, mini version of large aircrafts.
