Passenger plane C919

First sod of what will be an assembly plant for the Chinese passenger plane was in Shanghai on Monday.

The plant will be south of the Pudong International Airport and may be an area of 2.67 million square meters, reports the China Daily.

2012 is a first part of the plant to be ready. Then regional jet planet ARJ-21 is delivered from the factory. From 2016 it also is capacity to supply the larger C919 plane that can accommodate up to 168 passengers.

To produce these planes was formed some years ago the company Comac (Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China Ltd).

In additional to the production of ARJ-21, which samples are flown now and will be finished in late 2010, projected the larger plane C919. It can be compared in size with Airbus A320s or Boeing 737s. The engines are expected to come from CFM International collaboration between General Electric and the French Safran.

The idea is that the C919 will be ready for test flight in 2014 and will be delivered to customers 2016th that year, the production rate to be 20 pieces of C919 and 50 pieces of ARJ-21.