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.
The Vietnam government will build an airport for turboprop aircraft at Tan Uyen in Lai Chau, a rugged northwestern province with poor ground communications. The $228 million airport will go into service in 2012 with a runway that is 2,000 meters long (6,560 ft.) and 30 meters wide. The facility will be used at first as a “local service airport” and, from 2030, as an internal civil airport, says the Vietnam News Agency. The terminal will initially handle up to 40,000 passengers a year and will be upgraded to 110,000 passengers a year by 2030.
SilkAir has started flights from Singapore to Bangalore and Chennai, complementing services by parent Singapore Airlines as part of a group strategy to deal with low-cost competition. Tiger Airways and Air India Express also fly between Singapore and India. Jetstar Asia is looking at doing so. SilkAir launched daily flights between Singapore and Bangalore on May 17 and to Chennai on June 14, using Airbus A319s and A320s. Since Singapore Airlines serves each city daily with widebody aircraft, the frequencies have been doubled.
Japan Airlines will cut 19,300 jobs, more than originally planned but not quite as many as reported when the bankrupt carrier decided earlier this year to retrench more severely to turn around its business. Most of the positions will be abolished by the end of the current financial year, March 31, 2011, many by selling subsidiaries.
