Air China has put China’s domestically developed C909 jetliner into international service for the first time, inaugurating a daily route between Hohhot in Inner Mongolia and Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. Flight CA757 departed Hohhot Baita International Airport at around 8 a.m. local time on 1 July and landed in Ulaanbaatar after a little more than an hour, according to the carrier and state media. The route—operated as CA757/CA758 and scheduled for seven round trips a week—extends the commercial network of the 78- to 97-seat C909 beyond China’s borders nine years after the model entered domestic service. The C909, renamed from the ARJ21 in late 2024, is produced by Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (COMAC) and has a range of up to 3,700 km. Air China introduced the C909 in 2020 and now operates 35 of the aircraft from hubs in Beijing, Chengdu and Hohhot, logging more than 110,000 flight hours. The flag carrier said it will continue scaling up operations of both the C909 and the larger C919, and plans to participate in development of the wide-body C929, underscoring Beijing’s ambition to build an indigenous commercial-aviation supply chain.