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.
The government of Hebei province surrounding Beijing is making a bid to head off plans to build a second airport at the capital, saying it will upgrade its own nearby airport to take on the role. Hebei also proposes new airports at Qinhuangdao (Shanhaiguan), Zhangjiakou and Chengde and expansion at Handan under a program budgeted at 2 billion yuan ($300 million).
China Eastern is moving strongly into the territory of rival Air China by setting up a branch airline in Chengdu that it plans to equip with 30 aircraft by 2015. Routes to Southeast Asia, an express service to Shanghai and new direct flights to China’s well-developed cities feature in China Eastern’s Chengdu plans, which will exploit the expansion of the city’s Shuangliu Airport.
Thai Airways International has deployed two new Boeing 777 freighters to boost its cargo business, which until now has taken a backseat to passenger services. The 777-200Fs operate two flights a week on the Bangkok-Frankfurt route and once a week on the Bangkok-Hong Kong-Amsterdam-Bangkok sector. Each aircraft has a 102-ton capacity. Both are operated by Southern Air, a Connecticut-based cargo carrier, under an aircraft blocked-space agreement struck last year when the Thai airline agreed to acquire all of the capacity of the aircraft for the next two years.
