ARJ21 wins First Prize for 2019 State Scientific and Technological Progress Award

press release

http://english.comac.cc/news/latest/202001/15/t20200115_7169466.shtml

The Awarding Ceremony of State Science and Technology Awards was solemnly held in Beijing on January 10th, 2020. The China-made regional jet ARJ21 won the First Prize for 2019 State Scientific and Technological Progress Award. This is the highest award that ARJ21 aircraft program has received so far.

The State Scientific and Technological Progress Award is one of the five State Science and Technology Awards established by the State Council, and is conferred on citizens or organizations that have made outstanding contribution in technical research, technological development, technical innovation, applying and disseminating advanced scientific and technological achievements, promoting the industrialization of high and new technology, or completing major scientific and technological projects, plans and programs. It is divided into the Special Prize, the First Prize and the Second Prize.

ARJ21 aircraft is the first self-developed turbofan regional jet with independent intellectual property right. The program was approved by the state in April 2002. ARJ21 aircraft completed its maiden flight on November 28th, 2008, and obtained Type Certificate (TC) from Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) on December 30th, 2014. The first ARJ21 aircraft was delivered to Chengdu Airlines on November 29th, 2015, and successfully completed the maiden trip on June 28th, 2016, which breaks the situation of there being no China-made jets on Chinese airlines. With the development of ARJ21 aircraft, China has gone through the entire process of design, manufacturing, testing, flight test, batch production, delivery and operation of a jet, mastered the core technologies for the research and development of transport category civil jets, filled in the gap of the whole-course practice of transport category jets independently developed by China, achieved great improvement in the integrated innovation capability of transport category jets in China's aviation industry, and further solidified the foundation for the development of China's civil aircraft industry.

After more than ten years of arduous exploration and independent innovation, ARJ program team has established a systematic and complete civil aircraft airworthiness design and verification technology system for the first time in China; solved the technical problem of inter-system interconnection security evaluation; overcame the technical difficulties in special risk verification, such as both engine failure, tire burst, bird strike and engine rotor burst; made breakthroughs in analysis and test verification technologies in extremely complicated meteorological conditions such as icing, contaminated runway, crosswind, high temperature and extreme cold; acquired the knowledge of a number of key verification flight test technologies such as high horizontal tail aircraft stall, minimum lift-off speed, landing gear shimmy, flight control fault simulation and functional reliability; and filled in multiple gaps in China's aviation industry. The ARJ21 aircraft program has obtained 140 invention patents, proposed 59 international and national standards, 6,778 enterprise/industry standards, and won 117 provincial and ministerial scientific and technological awards.

ARJ21 aircraft program was launched on the basis that there is no civil aircraft model task in China for many years and there is serious brain drain, designers and managers have insufficient research and understanding of aircraft certification regulations and aircraft operation regulations, and there is almost no preliminary research, therefore the technology span is far greater than just one generation of aircraft. During the airworthiness certification phase, ARJ21 aircraft completed a total of 300 ground test items and 528 verification flight test items, accumulated 2,942 sorties of flight test and 5,258 flight hours, closed 398 airworthiness provisions, and completed 3,418 compliance reports.

As a "pioneer" for domestic commercial aircraft, ARJ21 aircraft has led to the formation of an airworthiness review system that complies with international standards and the airworthiness review capability of transport category civil jets. Enterprises, colleges and universities in many provinces and cities across the country has participated in the research and development of the program, which drives the development of the whole industry chain of "industry, university and research", and promotes the formation of an aviation industry cluster covering aircraft material suppliers, aircraft part suppliers, aircraft final assembly plants, maintenance and service providers, and aviation service providers.

The ARJ21 aircraft of Chengdu Airlines began to operate in the international round-trip route between Harbin and Vladivostok on October 26th, 2019, which was the first time for a China-made aircraft to fly abroad, and the commercial operation of ARJ21 aircraft has gotten a new leap. Up to now, a total of 22 ARJ21 aircraft have been delivered to customers, and the aircraft have successively operated in more than 37 routes in more than 38 cities, and carried more than 690,000 passengers.