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.
Last-minute 2006 narrow-body orders from Singapore Aircraft Leasing Enterprise (SALE) will give the Asian lessor product to offer beginning in 2009, after brisk demand snapped up almost all the 30 Boeing 737s it had contracted for in the previous two years. The company ordered 20 narrow-body aircraft from each of the manufacturers just before Christmas, taking up options it already held for 737s and signing a wholly new contract for Airbus A320-family aircraft. Deliveries are due in the three years from the first quarter of 2009.
The world's lowest-cost short-haul airline, Malaysia's AirAsia, is buying 100 more A320s as its founders move to set up a long-haul affiliate that they say will deliver the lowest seat-kilometer costs in the world. AirAsia has also taken options on another 30 aircraft in its A320 deal, which will feed the existing short-haul business as the new no-frills long-haul operation, AirAsia X, introduces wide-body twinjets.
Struggling Asian carrier China Eastern Airlines is relaxing restrictions on ownership of its shares, opening the way for another carrier, probably Singapore Airlines, to buy a stake in the company and offer much-needed management help. The move may give Singapore Airlines (SIA) some of the beyond rights that it is always hankering for, connecting China with the U.S., though at the risk of putting money into a money-losing business that could be quite a challenge to reform.
