China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system, developed as an alternative to foreign systems like GPS, was used for the first time in civil aviation on Saturday morning, when a Chinese regional jetliner conducted a test flight from Dongying Shengli Airport in east China's Shandong Province. The flight successfully tested the performance of the onboard navigation information receiver, the ground-based signal enhancement system, and the short-message function of BeiDou, according to the state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC).