Jakarta –
TransNusa will be the first airline in Indonesia to use aircraft made in China. The plane in question is Comac ARJ21-700 manufactured by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) in Shanghai.
The Main Director of TransNusa, Bayu Sutanto, said that his party needed a small plane to reach certain routes. That is why, he ended up choosing the China-made Comac ARJ21-700 passenger jet.
“The consideration is that there are routes that we will develop that also require an aircraft whose capacity is not as large as the A320. The class is called a regional jet,” said Bayu Sutanto, quoted from detikTravel, Tuesday (14/2/2023).
“So there is still a need for certain routes where there is not much demand. They don’t need transit and their capacity is also not much,” he added.
So, what are the specifications and sophistication of the Comac ARJ21-700? To the extent that TransNusa is interested in using it.
Comac ARJ21-700 specifications used by TransNusa
Quoted from the Airlines-inform and Aerospace-technology pages, the Comac ARJ21-700 has been operating since 2009. Before being used by TransNusa, these passenger aircraft were used by Chengdu Airlines, Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines.
The ARJ21-700 is the smallest passenger aircraft in the ARJ 21 family. The vehicle in the air dimension only has a length of 33.5 meters, a height of 8.4 meters, and a wing area of 79.9 m2. While the empty weight is 25 thousand kilograms with a maximum take-off weight of 45 thousand kilograms.
The passenger plane has a trunk that can carry up to 8,900 kilograms of luggage. Then the fuel capacity is claimed to reach 12,700 liters. So, this provision allows the plane to travel 2,200 kilometers in one flight, with a maximum speed of 870 km/hour.
The ARJ21-700 has a relatively narrow cabin space, which is 3.1 meters wide and 2 meters high. Meanwhile, the passenger capacity is around 78 to 90 people.
Development of the ARJ21 model itself has started since March 2002, the first prototype was launched in December 2007 and made its maiden flight in November 2008 from Shanghai.
The model even received CAAC Type certification in December 2014 and was first used by Chengdu Airlines in mid-2016.
In addition to producing the ARJ21, COMAC has also started producing the C919 passenger aircraft, which is more or less the same class as the Boeing 737. COMAC’s production capacity in Shanghai has now reached 50 aircraft per year.
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