(Yicai) May 28 -- A sixth C919 passenger plane joined the China Eastern Airlines fleet today, exactly a year after the homegrown plane’s first commercial flight, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The narrow-body airliner that the Shanghai-based company took delivery of yesterday was the first of an order for 100 C919s it placed with Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China in September 2023.

China Eastern’s first five C919s have flown more than 6,000 hours since the carrier’s appropriately numbered flight MU9191 took off from Shanghai for Beijing on May 28, 2023.

They mainly fly three routes -- Shanghai to Beijing, Shanghai to Chengdu, and Shanghai to Xi’an -- and had carried almost 300,000 passengers on 2,181 flights between these cities as of yesterday, clocking up 6,090 flying hours, China Eastern said on the same day.

The average passenger load on the planes was close to 80 percent in the past year, more than other jets working the same routes, demonstrating that the aircraft is a commercial success, China Eastern Chairman Wang Zhiqing said.

China Eastern has more than 60 pilots and nearly 170 flight attendants dedicated to its C919 fleet. It has specially trained over 60 maintenance workers, 40 dispatchers and 14,000 ground crew to handle this model.

Editor: Kim Taylor