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.
As China’s well-funded push to build up its aero-engine industry gathers strength, details are emerging of new aviation powerplants in early development. Three of these—a turboprop, turboshaft and turbofan—form a family built on a common core, a cost-effective development practice that the Western industry now rarely uses. Two others, turbofans for commercial aircraft, are based on the common approach of scaling turbo machinery up or down to meet different thrust requirements.
No one doubts China’s eagerness to move into the civil aircraft-engine sector with a broad range of products. But Avic’s ability to verify the performance and safety of its civil engines, always in question, is now confirmed to be quite lacking.
