Alliance Aircraft has teamed up with China’s Mei Li Xing Hang Industrial to bring a twinjet 50-seat regional airliner to market, the Starliner 100.

The joint venture, known as Chongqing Commercial Aircraft (CCAC), also aims to bring to market a corporate version of the aircraft.

The StarLiner would be powered by 9,000-pound-class turbofans giving the airliner version a 2,000 nautical mile (nm) range at Mach 0.80. The corporate version would have a range of 4,000nm.

The regional variant could enter service in 2018 or 2019. The corporate variant would follow in 2020.

So far, $81 million has been lined up in initial capital, and company executives are quoted as saying they expect to raise about $800 million for the project. Current development stages involve evaluating both engines and avionics for the aircraft.

Assembly as well as flight-test and certification programs will take place in Chongqing, China.