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.
Chances are rising that the Comac C919 will be largely limited to the Chinese market, as the manufacturer works towards local airworthiness certification while seeing no clear path to the desired FAA endorsement of the type. The Chinese market is big, so sales of perhaps 1,000 units remain plausible, in the opinion of program officials. But the 158-seat narrowbody’s prospects for making a much bigger splash on the wider market, perhaps never large, are diminishing.
China Southern is trying to build up at one of SkyTeam partner China Eastern’s major bases with an application to set up a branch company in Kunming. The move follows China Eastern’s defeat of a similar move by China Southern at Shanghai in the past two months. Before that, China Eastern’s lobbying prevented China Southern from flying Airbus A380s between Kunming and Beijing. Under the bureaucratic scheme of the Chinese airline industry, a branch company can be the basis of enlarged operations.
The owner of a new airline to be based in eastern China will order 30 Bombardier Q400s with the aim of setting up a regional network for the province of Jiangsu. The carrier, Sutong Airlines, will begin operations in 2015 with an all-Q400 fleet, says Bombardier, announcing the signature of a letter of intent for the order. No options are mentioned.
