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.
AirAsia and the Qantas group’s Jetstar Airways are likely to deepen their newly announced alliance, whose ambitions so far include seeking to influence the design of future narrowbody airliners from Airbus and Boeing. The planned joint specification will, perhaps for the first time, present western manufacturers with a powerful Asia/Pacific influence in the design of narrowbody aircraft, just as carriers in the Far East have long been heavyweight players in determining the characteristics of widebody commercial transports.
Boeing’s Shanghai airframe maintenance shop is aiming to match Western labor efficiency with its new Chinese workforce, presenting a challenge to local as well as international rivals.
AirAsia and Jetstar are negotiating a joint venture aimed at cutting costs while leaving the two leading Asia/Pacific budget carriers in competition for passengers. The companies would cooperate in ground-handling at airports that they both use and in purchasing, said Jetstar, but the Australian carrier’s owner, Qantas, stressed that the discussions are at a preliminary stage. No equity connection between the two airlines is likely, however. Jetstar said the key objective would be cutting costs.
