China has achieved new progress in independent development of advanced aircraft engines, with three new models to undergo maiden flight and obtain production certification this year, said a chief engineer of Aero Engine Corporation of China on Wednesday.
In an interview with China Media Group (CMG) on the sidelines of the third session of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC) -- China's national legislature -- in Beijing, the chief engineer, Shan Xiaoming, disclosed that the three new models of aero engines to undergo maiden flight this year are the AES100, the AES20 and the AEP100.
Shan, who is a deputy to the NPC, made the statement in commenting on the government work report delivered to the annual legislative session which stipulates that China will promote high-level self-reliance in science and technology, and intensify the push for breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields and for research and development advancements in frontier and disruptive technologies.
The AES100 and the AES20 are advanced civil turboshaft engines independently developed by China. They are mainly used on civil helicopters deployed in multiple fields, including agriculture and forestry plant protection, air monitoring, and traffic supervision.
"The AES100 will be authorized a PC (production certification) this year, which will lay the groundwork for future mass production. We also have the AES20 engine with relatively low power, which will also undergo its maiden flight this year. So in the production of general aviation engines this year, we will have more spectacular developments which are worth looking forward to," Shan said.
An AEP100 engine that can be installed on drones with a takeoff weight of three to 10 tons will also undergo its first flight this year, and its overall performance has met the advanced technological levels of the same grade aero engines developed by other countries.
"The AEP100 will make its maiden flight with the 10.8-ton class of the world's largest unmanned aerial vehicle for logistics. The technological evolution is poised to lead to continuous change and development in aerodynamics. Besides traditional oil power, others like hybrid power, pure electric power and hydrogen energy are also in the process of development and verification," Shan said.
China makes new strides in developing advanced aircraft engines
A World Health Organization (WHO) medical epidemiologist on Sunday sought to ease public concerns over a hantavirus outbreak linked to a cruise ship, stressing that the virus is not airborne like COVID-19 and that the average person has no reason to worry.
Spain began evacuating passengers the same day from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius, which had anchored earlier off the Port of Granadilla on the island of Tenerife.
The MV Hondius departed Argentina on April 1 with more than 140 passengers and crew from 23 countries on board. The ship has reported eight infections, including three deaths. Six of the cases have been laboratory-confirmed as Andes virus infections, caused by a rodent-borne hantavirus endemic to South America and the only known hantavirus strain capable of limited human-to-human transmission.
Boris Pavlin, a medical epidemiologist with the WHO, said the cruise ship affected by a hantavirus outbreak had been carefully managed by Spanish authorities and posed little risk to the general public. "This is not COVID. The average person does not need to be worried about hantavirus here in this setting. These folks are being managed very carefully, very deliberately, by the Spanish authorities; they're getting off the ship, they are getting into small boats, they are being spaced apart in the buses so there's no risk to one another. Even if one were to become symptomatic -- we know that none of them were symptomatic as they have been leaving the ship -- they're going straight to their aircraft and they're being taken to their respective national jurisdictions," he said.
Pavlin said the exact source of exposure remained under investigation, but the initial cases appeared to be linked to a pre-cruise land excursion in South America.
"From what we understand of the initial cases, there was -- as one does often on a cruise -- there was a land-side excursion before the cruise in which places were visited that are home to these specific rodents that are associated with the Andes hantavirus. These are not worldwide rodents; the long-tailed rice rat is very specific to the Andes Cordillera region of South America, and that's where people who are exposed to the rodents were. So it was in one of those places they were exposed. We don't know exactly because there are several possibilities, and I believe that the Argentinian authorities are actually even going to look at that and try to do some animal sampling to get to the very bottom of it. But that part's not unexpected at all," he said.
The official praised Spanish authorities' handling of the ship and described the response as a closely coordinated international effort.
"This has been an extremely cooperative, collegial international effort. The Spanish authorities are very diligent and deliberate about what's happening here. There's nothing that would surprise us. I think that somebody might become exposed; we want to obviously make sure that people who are coming off the ship are not newly exposed to one another as they get off and go to their respective places, and we're not seeing that," Pavlin said.
But while the immediate disembarkation process had gone smoothly, he emphasized that health officials were not letting their guard down.
"However, the contact tracing and follow-up of every person who has been in even the lightest contact with the patients will continue until a maximum incubation period. In any case, there are contingency plans should someone become ill, and we know that it doesn't just spread like wildfire, so even if they were to become ill, we don't expect a large outbreak after this," the official said.
Cruise ship hantavirus outbreak "not COVID," poses low public risk: WHO expert
