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.
Japan Airlines has extended its early retirement program to flight crew, inviting applications from 2,300 pilots over the age of 35. The company is seeking to cut its workforce by 2,700, or about 5% of total employees. To that end, it was already seeking early retirements from non-pilot members of its staff.
The Chinese space industry is studying a Moon rocket in the class of the Saturn V while separately moving ahead with a medium-heavy launcher that will complete a modern, modular family of launch vehicles. Chinese space engineers appear to be planning to assemble manned lunar spacecraft in orbit with two or more launches per mission.
China Southern plans to raise up to 10.75 billion yuan (US$1.58 billion) in equity to reduce debt. The airline said it will sell new stock to institutional buyers, including China Southern Air Holding Co., the state company that already controls it. China Southern is not naming the other institutional investors. The placement is part of a wave of airline recapitalizations that followed the Chinese industry’s descent into a serious slowdown two years ago.
