China's first domestically built jetliner has completed its maiden commercial flight – and an aviation expert has told CGTN how it could shake up the sector-dominating duopoly of Airbus and Boeing.  

Operated by China Eastern Airlines, the C919 flew from Shanghai to Beijing with 128 passengers on board, a flight marking the craft's official entry into the civil aviation market. The plane will operate between Shanghai and Chengdu before expanding to other routes. 

The plane is around 40 meters long and 12 meters high, with a wingspan of more than 35 meters. It can carry up to 192 passengers, reaching an altitude of more than 12,000 meters and a speed of 0.8 mach, which is around 980 kilometers per hour. 

The C919 is expected to be a competitor to the similarly-sized Airbus A320neo and Boeing 737 Max, and manufacturer Commercial Aviation Corporation of China (Comac) said in January it had received more than 1,200 orders from over 30 clients – a huge boost for the country's aviation sector.

"This is China's opportunity to enter the biggest single sector of the airline marketplace," explains David Learmount, consulting editor at the aviation news platform FlightGlobal. 

"The Airbus A320 series and the Boeing 737 series, between the two of them, have sold more aircraft than any other type in the history of aviation by far. So this is a massive market – and it will get bigger."

U.S. company Boeing and European multinational Airbus are the unquestioned giants of the aviation sector, swallowing up such a majority of market share that they effectively represent a duopoly. However, Learmount says the very fact that Airbus has taken on Boeing should give newcomers hope of market penetration. 

"Airbus challenged Boeing by coming into the market for the first time in 1970, and now it's up there as Boeing's equal completely," he tells CGTN. "So it can be done – you can have a newcomer, an outsider coming in and taking a huge sector of the market. The market will grow, so there is space for another."

Indeed, Learmount expects plenty of interest in the new alternative. 

"There's a fair amount of the marketplace – the airlines themselves, the buyers – who would like to see some more competition," he says. "Michael O'Leary, the leader of Europe's biggest airline, Ryanair, has said he wants to see the C919 out there to challenge these two established players."

However, airlines are often cautious before large-scale expenditure – hardly surprising when each plane in this class can cost $100m or more. Such caution is understandable in an industry obsessed with safety and resilience. 

"The standard of manufacturing and sheer reliability in service is extremely high, and the C919 has to be able to equal this," warns Learmount. "So I think you'll find that most of the players, especially the big Western players, will want to watch the aircraft in service to see what levels of reliability the operating airlines get out of it."

Learmount sees two potential ways for newcomers to attract buyers. "The first strategy is to underprice the market, because that may encourage people if they're prepared to take a bit of a risk in order to go for a good price," he says.

"The other is to sell the aircraft to the world's big aircraft leasing companies – some airlines don't own aircraft, they lease them. So if you have airlines who don't want to take a long-term risk with purchasing the aircraft, they can lease it."

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