By the way, just another question regarding the cold weather and snow at Shenyang right now: As such won't it be wiser to wait until lets say March and warmer weather for a maiden flight?![]()
Depends. SAC will be correspondingly experienced at operating in cold weather, so it could be done. While icy, the winter weather in North-East Asia is typically clear and stable (prevailing continental high pressure). Precipitation is actually rare (so chances of a clean and dry runway are really good), all that snow simply accumulates over time because it never melts away until spring! Komsomolsk-na-Amure is further North and quite a bit colder still, yet they conducted the first flight of the T-50 in late January. Dito with Irkutsk and the recent first flight of the PD-14 powered MS-21.
If you have measures in place to deal with the extreme cold, there are worse seasons for a first flight in Shenyang by some measures!