Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
Shenzhen Airlines plans to expand to at least 171 aircraft by 2015, ramping up capacity by 10% a year in its role as the Air China group’s challenger in the home territory of rival China Southern. That fleet forecast is conservative, says an airline official. “If possible, it will be more than 180.”
Lufthansa will open routes to at least two more second-tier Chinese cities, markets that are attractive because of their populations and rising wealth but present great challenges for business development. The announcement will be made on July 8, says a company official. Among Western airlines, only Lufthansa and KLM are flying into Chinese airports other than the three hubs that dominate the country’s long-haul traffic—Beijing Capital, Shanghai Pudong and Guangzhou Baiyun.
Star Alliance will join rivals SkyTeam and Oneworld in moving into China’s Pearl River Delta with Shenzhen Airlines’ agreement to join the group. The deal also means that Star will add mainland China’s fifth-largest airline to its member list, which already includes Shenzhen Airlines’ 51% shareholder, Air China. Initial network benefits largely will be limited to Asian partners, however, because Star members from farther afield do not fly to Shenzhen, the carrier’s main base. The airline’s second base, Guangzhou, attracts more long-haul traffic.
