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.
Jetstar Asia, the Singaporean offshoot of Qantas’s budget carrier, is negotiating to buy a stake in Taiwan’s bankrupt Far Eastern Air Transport, according to a Taipei press report. Such an investment would be the next move in the Asia-Pacific budget airlines’ maneuvering for strings of franchisees based across the region. The latest such step was Qantas’s agreement this month to turn Vietnam’s Pacific Airlines into a Jetstar-branded carrier, replicating the operations and service of the Australian budget airline.
Shanghai Airlines has become the only listed Chinese airline to post a loss for 2007. The company, which analysts say is a ripe takeover target because of its strong position in Shanghai and weakness elsewhere, lost a net CNY497 million (US$71 million) last year, compared with a profit of CNY82.2 million in 2006. The loss occurred despite the strong growth in Chinese aviation demand of around 15% last year. Shanghai Airlines itself enjoyed revenue growth of 23%, but suffered even faster cost growth even though its aircraft flew with fuller cabins.
South Korea will loosen restrictions on budget airlines that bar them from flying internationally in their first two years of operations. The move will open opportunities for the many budget airlines that hope to begin flying in South Korea in the next year: Busan Air, Air Korea, Incheon Tiger Airways, Yeongnam Air and PurpleAir. The first three in that list are affiliates of Asiana, Korean Air and Singapore’s Tiger Airlines, respectively.
