When China’s first large airliner, the C919, went through certification, the university that helped make it airworthy sits in Tianjin. Civil Aviation University of China, the country’s first civil aviation university, provided key technical support for the C919 certification effort, a role that sums up what this school has done since 1951: put the technical foundation under Chinese civil aviation.
The university began in 1951 as the second civil aviation school of the national civil aviation bureau, became the Civil Aviation Institute of China in 1981, and took its present name in 2006. It operates two campuses in Tianjin, in Dongli and Ninghe, plus three flight training bases in Chaoyang, Hulunbuir and Shihezi, and covers nearly 3,900 mu, about 260 hectares, with 30,000-plus full-time students.
Safety science and engineering anchors the academic side: the discipline hosts civil aviation’s first postdoctoral station, two first-level doctoral programs and a new doctoral track in low-altitude safety technology, alongside 15 first-level master’s programs. Forty-seven undergraduate programs include eight national first-class programs and three accredited by the international Aviation Accreditation Board, plus two majors, aircraft operations and maintenance and aviation security management, that were the first of their kind in China.
Research centers on keeping aircraft safe and the skies orderly. A national key laboratory for air traffic control operation safety leads five civil aviation administration laboratories and five municipal key laboratories, feeding five research institutes from airworthiness to future airports. The university has completed seven national large-aircraft projects and 40-plus provincial-and-above science awards, and it runs an aviation law collaborative innovation center and a national university science park.
Training is where the school’s character shows: 110-plus flight training aircraft, two full-flight D-class simulators, and a fleet of maintenance practice planes keep students close to real machines. Internationally, a Sino-European aviation engineers college founded with a French aerospace universities group won recognition as an outstanding Sino-French university cooperation project, and the school holds platinum membership in the ICAO training program, the highest tier, while training aviation personnel for ASEAN under a Belt and Road initiative.
What does it take to put a country’s first large airliner in the sky? Technical support from the university that has trained its civil aviation workforce since 1951, and the C919’s certification is Civil Aviation University of China’s proof, written in the air.
Data Source: CAUC Official Website (as of 2026)
