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’ search for a strategic investor could lead to a shake-up of the global airline alliance system. The carrier says it wants to choose a foreign investor by the end of October. The investor would pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a stake of around 10% in the airline, which has a market capitalization of about $4.8 billion. Japan Airlines’ (JAL) value to an alliance can hardly be overstated. It is the largest carrier in Asia and the biggest in the world’s second-largest economy.
KOREAN BUY: South Korea will buy Elta Systems Green Pine Block-B radars for its nascent ballistic missile defense system, planning to install them in central and northern parts of the country in 2012. The Defense Acquisition Program Administration says the Green Pine outperformed a rival system from Thales in a test in August. The French company offered the M3R radar derived from its Ground Master 400 system to South Korea. The administration has previously said it would buy ballistic-missile defense radars by the end of this year.
The third Comac ARJ21 regional jet has made its first flight as part of a test program that is aiming for U.S. Federal Aviation Administration validation of its Chinese airworthiness certification by 2012. The Chinese manufacturer will add a fourth unit to the group of test aircraft this year. Chinese certification and entry into service are due in 2010.
