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.
Mitsubishi Aircraft and parent Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are confirming the program schedule for the MRJ regional jet as assembly of the first unit begins in Nagoya. Six months after manufacturing of the first part began, Mitsubishi Heavy ceremonially started the riveting of a frame around the cockpit emergency escape hatch.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, now building the first Mitsubishi Regional Jet, intends to apply continuous and rapid process improvement under the Japanese kaizen philosophy. Managers aim to begin assembling the first aircraft this year for an initial flight in 2012 and deliver it in early 2014, with no hint of a serious slip in the schedule so far.
Bradley Perrett (Beijing), Joseph C. Anselmo (Washington)
When the Airbus-Boeing duopoly is finally broken, as eventually it must be, the third competitor just might be called Combardier. Or Bomac. In an exercise that seems to fall not far short of forming a joint venture, Canada’s Bombardier and China’s Comac are moving ahead with a potentially far-reaching outline agreement to see how they can bring commonality to their jet airliners and help each other to sell aircraft.
