On March 5, the 'Draft Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development' (hereinafter referred to as the 'Draft') officially appeared on the agenda of the 2026 National Two Sessions and was submitted to representatives for review. Compared with the Central Committee's proposal released last October, the Draft includes more detailed expressions and policy plans.
The Draft proposes to improve the ecosystem for industrial innovation and development. In an accompanying table, it provides examples, including promoting the capacity expansion and supply chain development for the C919 aircraft, carrying out the development and application of the C919 plateau variant and other serialized models, C909 derivatives, and new energy aircraft, and accelerating technological breakthroughs for the C929 aircraft and the validation and application of the CJ-1000A engine.
The C929 is a new model COMAC plans to launch in the future, positioned as a wide-body airliner. According to COMAC, the baseline model will have approximately 280 seats, capable of meeting a wide range of global international and regional air passenger transport market demands.
From this Draft, it appears the '15th Five-Year Plan' period will focus on developing the C909 and C919 derivative models. For example, regarding the 'plateau variant' mentioned in the Draft, public information suggests that such models typically require higher performance redundancy to cope with the variable climatic conditions on plateaus.
According to the 'China High Plateau Airport Development Report (2024)' released by the consulting agency CADAS, China ranks first in the world for the total number of plateau and high plateau airports. The main aircraft types operating on high plateau routes include the Airbus A319, Boeing B737, Airbus A332, and Airbus A333. However, domestic airlines are facing a relatively common issue of aging among their main high plateau aircraft. Newer generation models from Boeing and Airbus have not yet been widely deployed on domestic high plateau routes. Furthermore, factors such as changes in the global economic landscape have led both Airbus and Boeing to lower their production capacity forecasts, resulting in a continued tightening of global fleet availability. Currently, the domestic high plateau fleet is in a transitional phase with a gap between retiring older models and introducing sufficient new ones.
According to a report by Yicai, during the Singapore Airshow in 2024, Tibet Airlines signed an order for 50 domestic large aircraft of the plateau variant, including 40 C919 plateau variants and 10 ARJ-21 plateau variant aircraft.
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