On 07 December 2015, King Willem Alexander of the Netherlands paid a working visit to the large low-speed wind tunnel of DNW, the LLF. This visit was an aftermath of the recent signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Dutch and Chinese governments to promote the cooperation on civil aircraft technology. The King was accompanied by the Ambassador of China in the Netherlands, Mr. Chen Xu.
During the visit a scaled model of the C919, a civil passenger aircraft of the Chinese aircraft manufacturer Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) is being tested in the DNW-LLF. This wind tunnel test campaign is one in a series during the past decade for various Chinese aircraft development projects. Both, DNW and its Dutch parent company, the Netherlands Aerospace Centre NLR, paid various contributions to the development of the C919 that recently had its roll-out.
After the facility tour, a round-table discussion took place with representatives of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, the trade organization of the Dutch aerospace sector NAG, Fokker Technologies, ADSE, KVE Composites Group, DNW, Delft University of Technology and NLR. They all are part of the cluster Partners for International Business D2DRAGON that formed the basis for the MoU between the Netherlands and China.