Chaker A. Chahrour, executive vice president of CFM International, comments on Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China Ltd.’s C919, the nation’s first large passenger aircraft program. He spoke in Beijing yesterday.

CFM International, a venture between General Electric Co. (GE) and Safran SA (SAF), supplies engines for the C919, set for test flights in 2014. Comac, as the planemaker is known, is also developing the ARJ21, a 90-seat regional jet that has been delayed for about five years.

“ARJ is behind schedule for whatever reason, but I really don’t see too many associations between ARJ and the C919 schedule directly. The teams that run ARJ and C919 are totally independent teams. We monitor the C919 program very closely; we haven’t seen any indication that there will be delays that’s similar to where the ARJ program is. So we have confidence in Comac. We think they will be on schedule, we ask them about it just about every day.”

A call to Comac’s press office in Shanghai seeking comment wasn’t answered today.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Jasmine Wang in Hong Kong at jwang513@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Neil Denslow at ndenslow@bloomberg.net