COMAC’s 10-ton electric airliner CE-25A completes first piloted flight

On a runway in Binzhou, Shandong, a passenger aircraft with no jet engines took off with pilots on board. On Nov. 14, the CE-25A, a 10-metric-ton electric commercial airplane developed by Commercial Aircraft Corp of China, completed its first piloted intelligent flight. Citing a COMAC statement, China Daily reported that two pilots and a flight-test engineer were on board, the test lasted 57 minutes and 46 seconds, including 16 minutes and 38 seconds in the air, and the aircraft covered 60.4 kilometers. COMAC said the airplane performed normally and the results met expectations.

The CE-25A is COMAC’s first electric commercial aircraft, designed for short trips between cities and able to carry 19 passengers. Xinhua, citing COMAC, said it has a maximum takeoff weight of 10 metric tons, a cruising speed of 300 kilometers per hour, a cruising altitude of 2,400 meters and a design range of 400 kilometers. That range is roughly the distance between Beijing and Jinan, or Shanghai and Nanjing. Saturday’s hop of about 60 kilometers was a short crewed test, not a flight over the full design range. The airplane first made an uncrewed intelligent flight on Feb. 2 this year and later completed 19 uncrewed autonomous flight tests before this piloted step.

Instead of two large jet engines, the CE-25A uses a distributed electric ducted-fan propulsion system mounted on its wings: smaller electric fans sit along the wing and push air backward to produce thrust. Think of it as spreading the work across a row of smaller electric fans rather than betting everything on two big engines; if one unit has a problem, the others may still be able to keep the airplane flying. The “25” in its name means it is being developed to China’s CCAR-25 transport-category airworthiness rules, the same safety standard that applies to large commercial passenger jets; “E” stands for electric and “A” for the first model. COMAC is developing the aircraft with Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., Shanghai Jiao Tong University and other partners. The Civil Aviation Administration of China has accepted an application for a type certificate. That starts the certification process required before commercial passenger service; it is not the same as approval to carry paying passengers.

The field is still thinly populated. Eviation’s Alice in the United States is a smaller, nine-seat all-electric design, while Sweden’s Heart Aerospace is planning a 30-seat aircraft with hybrid-electric propulsion. The CE-25A puts the weight at 10 tons and the seat count at 19, and it is chasing transport-category certification, a path closer to a conventional regional airliner. A 16-minute crewed hop is still a long way from scheduled service. Full certification tests, how the batteries hold up in airline conditions, and whether the 400-kilometer range holds up in winter or on heavier routes all have to be shown in later flights.

For travelers, short regional hops may one day burn less kerosene and use more electricity. For now, this airplane has only taken its pilots into the air. The next test is whether those 16 minutes can be stretched into repeated, longer flights and a complete certification campaign that would allow tickets to be sold.

Original source published: Xinhua (citing COMAC), Nov 14, 2026, 12:03 Beijing time / 11:03 PM EST on Nov 13; China Daily (citing COMAC), Nov 14, 2026, 13:34 Beijing time / 12:34 AM EST