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.
Avic Aircraft, assuming control of a large chunk of the Chinese commercial aircraft industry, will reshape its business units in the pattern of Airbus. Old regional entities such as Xi’an Aircraft and Shaanxi Aircraft will be abolished and their assets reallocated along functional lines to create a framework of units each specializing in its own part of the aircraft, such as the wing or nose section.
China is accelerating reform of its military aircraft sector by bringing forward the establishment of a company that will be its national defense champion. Government and industry leaders have dropped plans to initially restrict the new business—a maker of fighters, trainers, drones and missiles—to the status of a division of national aeronautics conglomerate Avic (AW&ST Mar. 30, p. 40).
China’s newly established Avic Aircraft intends to become the world’s third force in making large airplanes, setting itself up for rivalry with compatriot commercial aircraft builder Comac. The new company is poised to deeply restructure much of the Chinese aircraft industry, reshaping it in the pattern of Airbus. Old regional entities such as Xi’an and Shaanxi Aircraft are to be swept away, replaced with a framework of units each specializing in its own part of the airframe, such as the wing or nose section.
