China waves goodbye to veteran MD jet

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SHENYANG, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- A MD-90 aircraft left the northeastern city of Shenyang for its American home on Thursday, ending the service of the last McDonnell-Douglas jet for Chinese airlines.

Chinese carriers will no longer operate MD-made jets due to growing market demands, said Lu Changchun, deputy general manager with the north China branch of China Southern Airlines, which has operated the MD-90 jet for over a decade.

MD-90 jets were involved in no accidents during the decade-long-service in China, so safety concerns did not lead to their retirement, Lu said, adding about 1,000 MD-90 jets are still flying around the world.

Lu, however, admitted that supply of aircraft materials was affected as the production line of MD jets shrank, after McDonnell-Douglas Cooperation was merged into Boeing in 1997.

MD jets were replaced mainly because Chinese airlines need new models to accommodate air travel demands fueled by the economic boom, Lu said.

The north China branch of China Southern Airlines also announced Thursday the retirement of five A300-600R planes, which are replaced by A320 family jets. China Southern Airlines began flying an Airbus A380 superjumbo in China in October.

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China's domestic air travel market is predicted to grow 13.9 percent annually by 2014 and transport 379 million domestic air passengers, which will make the country the world's second-largest air travel market after the United States, according to a report released by the International Air Transport Association.

Back in the 1990s, a Shanghai-based aircraft maker assembled two MD-90 jets in China, Lu said, adding the two jets retired this year.

Change of jets model serves the strategic transformation of China Southern Airlines and meets the market demands, Lu said.

Li Jiaxiang, chief of China's civil aviation administration, estimated that over 1.5 trillion yuan (235 billion U.S. dollars) will be invested in the civil aviation industry by 2015, adding about 2,000 aircraft to the country's fleet.

Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, producer of China's first self-developed jumbo jet, the C919, has announced that it will complete the design for the passenger plane in 2012. The jet is expected to take off in 2014 and put into service in 2016.