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.
China will suspend approvals for airliner orders and ask carriers to delay deliveries of aircraft already under contract. Airbus orders may be under particular threat, because of the decision of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to meet Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. Airliner orders that have already been approved can go ahead, but further orders will not be allowed, the Civil Aviation Administration of China tells Bloomberg News.
Airbus is close to an agreement with Avic’s Harbin Aircraft to set up a joint composite-components plant in China, an early test of the European company’s policy of avoiding cooperation that promotes Chinese industry as a future competitor.
The Comac ARJ21 regional jet made its first flight on Nov. 28, eight months later than scheduled at its rollout a year ago, in a project that aims to make the first Chinese jetliner to go into commercial service. The first delivery of the initial model, the ARJ21-700, is now 18 months away, slipping from the previous 2009 target.
