In the early morning of June 30, 2024, a Boeing 777F large freighter with blue and white paint on Air China Cargo Airlines crossed the intercontinental route from across the ocean and landed smoothly at Beijing Capital International Airport. The resumption of the long-awaited reception of Boeing wide-body aircraft in China will be followed by deliveries of the Boeing 787 and Boeing 737 MAX.
The Boeing 777F freighter, registered B-223S, is the second of five Boeing 777 freighters purchased by Air China Cargo in September 2021. As early as February 15, 2023, Air China Cargo's first Boeing 777F freighter with registration number B-222S was delivered, and China only received the second one after a gap of more than 16 months.
The reason for China's interruption in receiving Boeing aircraft was that the previous cockpit voice recorder (CVR) did not meet the latest requirement of 25 hours. At the request of the FAA, Boeing changed the cabin sound recorder to 25 hours on all newly produced aircraft, and the continental civil aviation regulator needed to reevaluate the change, so it suspended the delivery of Boeing aircraft.
It is reported that the cockpit voice recorder modified by Boeing is installed in the tail of the cargo compartment, which starts recording when the aircraft is powered on and stops recording after the power is off. It can record four channels of sound, namely the captain's channel, the co-pilot channel, the backup channel, and the ambient sound channel, and the recording time can reach 25 hours, compared to about two to three hours before.
The Boeing 777F freighter, the latest of Air China Cargo's arrival, made its maiden flight on January 11, 2024, was produced at Boeing's Everett (PAE) base and has the manufacturer's MSN serial number 67834. It took off from Everett Payne Airport north of Seattle on June 29, crossed the North Pacific Ocean of 9,914 kilometers, flew for 11 hours and 37 minutes, and arrived at Capital International Airport at 0:08 Beijing time on June 30.
2024 marks the 30th anniversary of the first flight of the Boeing 777, and it is a blessing for the Boeing 777 to have the approval of the aviation regulator in the world's second-largest aviation market to resume deliveries to China in this meaningful year.
According to Liu Qing, president of Boeing China, Boeing 787, another wide-body aircraft, will resume delivery soon, and the single-aisle narrow-body Boeing 737 MAX will resume delivery to Chinese users in July. At the same time, Boeing is committed to fully resuming its business operations in China.
According to relevant information, the first wide-body passenger aircraft of Boeing 787 to resume delivery in China is likely to be Shanghai Airlines, with its registration number B-220K, and the model is Boeing 787-9, using F4, C26, W28, Y227 four-class layout, that is, 4 first class, 26 business class, 28 super economy class, and 227 economy class, with a total of 285 seats.
However, the Boeing 787 with two GEnx-1B74/75 engines is no longer a new aircraft, because it made its first flight on September 15, 2021, when it rolled off the production line in Charleston (CHS), several years ago, and its age is 2.8 years, and it has been waiting for delivery.