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Buried in the last paragraph of a short article inside the August 2022 issue of its official journal, Comac apparently confirmed that the MA700 regional turboprop of China’s Xian Aircraft Company has, in fact, flown. The fate of the prototype has been the subject of intense speculation, amid a geopolitical environment that had prevented its Canadian engines from being exported for the aircraft.
For the past year, The Air Current has been following clues of the aircraft’s fate, when social media chatter had suggested that the aircraft potentially took flight in late September 2021. There was little evidence beyond selected comments to confirm the aircraft had flown, but in November the prototype was photographed from orbit on the ramp at China’s ultra-secret Yanlian Air Base in Xian, where the country manufactures both commercial and military aircraft.
Related: MA700 turboprop resurfaces in China with chatter about a secret first flight
The deepening mystery is not only a technical and industrial one, but has significant geopolitical implications as Chinese leader Xi Jinping advances the company’s national aerospace priorities at the start of his unprecedented third term. China has invested heavily in commercial aerospace as it aims to become a provider of aircraft to itself, but had previously relied on greater cooperation from western suppliers for technology like avionics and engines.
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