The Civil Aviation Agency was created in December of the same year, and set offices in Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Wuhan.

[5] On 10 March 1950, the Guangzhou Office began to work, managing civil flight services in Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hunan.

The PLA Air Force was also responsible for technical, flight, aircrew, communicating, human resources, and political works.

Later, the Agency ratified the Report for the Opinions of System Devolving (Chinese: 关于体制下放意见的报告) from the party branch of the Ministry of Transport in 17 June.

The Agency was renamed the General Administration of Civil Aviation of the Ministry of Transport on 17 November 1960.

In December 1973, it took the unprecedented step of borrowing £40 million from Western banks to fund the purchase of 15 additional Trident jets.

On 5 March 1980, the General Administration of Civil Aviation was no longer managed by the PLA Air Force, and was transferred to the State Council.

In 1988, the airline CAAC was divided into a number of individual air carriers, many of them named after the region of China where it had its hub.

On 19 April 1993, the General Administration of Civil Aviation became the ministry-level agency of the State Council.

In March 2008, CAAC was made a subsidiary of the newly created Ministry of Transport, and its official Chinese name was slightly adjusted to reflect its being no longer a ministry-level agency.

[19] Later, the CAAC issued an airworthiness directive on 2 December to allow the type return to service if the MCAS is corrected following Boeing's instructions.