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.
Beijing Capital Airlines, a business aviation and air tour operator, plans to field more than 270 aircraft by 2015 as it exploits the explosive growth of the local market. Within that fleet, 141 will be business airplanes, says Ma Guohua, president of HNA Tourism, to which Capital is affiliated. The carrier has 24 business aircraft now, in a fleet of 50 aircraft of all types. One Boeing Business Jet is already on Capital’s books, and three are on order.
Taipei Songshan Airport expects to open a privately run business aviation facility this year to accommodate traffic growth of private aircraft at the centrally located downtown facility. A customs, immigration and quarantine area for business aviation is also planned for this year.
Avic Defense will use rapid prototyping centers like the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for future military aircraft developments, with the aim of overcoming what it says are inefficient production processes. The centers are being set up at the fighter plants at Shenyang and Chengdu, the latter of which has just begun test flying the large J-20 combat aircraft.
