THOUGH IT MAY have lacked the drama that accompanied takeoff at Kitty Hawk a century ago, a recent flight in the skies above Shanghai still marked a historic moment in aviation. On May 5 a plane called the C919 circled the city for an hour, with just five crew members aboard. The 168-seat jet is the first large commercial aircraft manufactured in China—its challenge to popular models from giants Boeing and Airbus. That first public test flight heralded the rise of Asia, and China in particular, in a radically evolving aviation…
As Billions More Fly, Here’s How Aviation Could Evolve
