REUTERS Carlos Jasso File Photo
SS, one of the country's three biggest carriers, completed a test flight of the Boeing 737 MAX on Friday, as Chinese airlines gear up for the model's return to service.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China CAAC, the first regulator to ground the 737 MAX after two fatal crashes, approved design changes in early December after more than two and a half years.
The regulator had expected airlines to resume commercial flights around the beginning of the year. A MAX 8 belonging to China Southern, the largest 737 MAX operator in the country, took off from its headquarters city in Guangzhou and touched down three hours and 33 minutes later in the same city, according to Variflight. That followed a Hainan Airlines flight 600221. SS on Jan. 9 from Taiyuan, where it had parked some of its grounded 737 MAX, to its base city in Haikou. According to tracking websites, the flight lasted for two hours and 52 minutes.
Boeing sold a quarter of the planes it built annually to Chinese buyers, its largest customers, before the MAX was grounded.
CAAC officials said the planes would need to be modified and pilots would need additional training before the resumption of commercial flights in the country.