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 will build aluminum wing boxes for its MRJ regional jet, backing away from the ambitious plan to use composites. The company, an offshoot of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, has also announced a three-month delay to the program. Composites turned out to save much less weight than expected, says Mitsubishi, adding that a metal structure will make it easier to adapt the wing to different versions of the aircraft. A third version could join the model line-up; a 100-seat stretch of the MRJ is being considered.
The Comac C919 program will aim to deliver operating costs 10% lower than those of the Airbus A320 and the current series of Boeing 737s. The aircraft will match the cross section of the A320 almost exactly, as Chinese designers mix conventional design features with technology a generation ahead of the aircraft’s aging Western competitors.
