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.
NO THANKS: Indonesia has declined a Qatari offer of 10 secondhand Dassault Mirage 2000s because it could not afford to maintain the fighters. Qatar has previously offered its Mirage 2000s to India.
Japanese meteorologists warned of a risk of wind shear at Tokyo Narita Airport the night before a Fedex MD-11 crashed on landing, killing the two crew members on board. Winds were reaching 72 km/h (39 kn.) at the time of the accident, about 06:49 local time (21:49 GMT). The aircraft crashed on the longer of Narita’s two runways. A video shown on television shows that the aircraft’s main gears touched down first but the nose then dropped heavily. The aircraft bounced and flipped over as flames exploded from the wing.
Xi’an Aircraft has begun building a factory at Tianjin, China, that will complete wings for the Airbus A320 family assembled at another plant in the city. Xi’an, which is being merged into a focused transport aircraft subsidiary of national conglomerate Avic, is already building wing boxes for the A320 family. The new plant will fit the wing boxes with equipment so they do not need to be sent to Britain and back before delivery to the Chinese final assembly line.
