China Just Flew a 19-Passenger Electric Plane Powered by a Row of Giant Ducted Fans and Honestly, Would You Get On This Thing?

Look, I get that electric planes are the future and all that. Greener skies, quiet rides, the whole bit. But then China drops the CE-25A and it looks like someone bolted a bunch of oversized box fans to the wings of a private jet and called it a day.⁠Aerotime

This is COMAC’s 10-ton electric commuter plane. It’s designed to haul 19 people between cities at about 300 km/h with a range of roughly 400 km. On November 14, 2026, it did its first flight with actual humans on board, two pilots and a flight test engineer, in Binzhou, Shandong. Before that, the thing had already done 19 autonomous (as in, no people) test flights starting back in February.⁠

The propulsion setup is what gets me. Instead of normal engines, it uses 10 electric ducted fans, five on each wing, lined up in a row. They’re those shrouded propeller things that look suspiciously like high-powered industrial fans or the intake on a turbojet, but all-electric and distributed. From the photos and video, they sit right there along the wing, spinning away. It’s distributed electric propulsion, which engineers say is more efficient and redundant (if one dies, you’ve still got nine others). Cool on paper. In practice, it looks like the plane is being pulled through the air by a line of really committed ceiling fans.⁠

The flight itself was short, about 16 minutes in the air covering 60 km. Everything worked. China’s civil aviation authority has even accepted the type certificate application, so this isn’t just a science project. It’s aiming for actual commercial intercity routes eventually.

But here’s the thing that makes me pause. Battery energy density is still the limiting factor, so 400 km is the realistic range. That’s not “fly across the country.” That’s “fly to the next city over, land, and plug it in for a while.” And the autonomy angle is interesting, it proved it could fly itself a bunch of times before they put people in it, but the idea of boarding a plane that spent months as a robot and is powered by a phalanx of ducted fans still feels like one of those “this is either genius or a spectacular way to die” situations.

So be honest: Would you actually get on this thing for a short hop? No traditional jet engines, just a bunch of electric fans doing the work, Chinese battery tech, and a plane that got comfortable flying empty first. I’m not saying no forever, the future is coming whether we like how it looks or not, but I’m also not volunteering to be the first guy in the middle seat while those fans are spinning up.

What’s your call?