China Eastern firms five C919 orders

China Eastern Airlines (MU, Shanghai Hongqiao) has signed a firm order agreement with COMAC (Shanghai Pudong) for its first five C919s. With the purchase order, signed on March 1, the majority-state-owned airline will become the type’s launch operator. As with its ARJ21-700 fleet, the locally-made C919s will be placed with China Eastern’s OTT Airlines (OTT, Shanghai Hongqiao) subsidiary. According to a press release, the incoming C919s will be based out of Shanghai Pudong and used to run regular trunk routes to Beijing Daxing Int’l, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu Tianfu, Xiamen, Wuhan, and Qingdao Liuting. China Eastern gave no service entry date for the C919.