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 Comac C919 program will aim to deliver operating costs 10% lower than those of the Airbus A320 and the current series of Boeing 737s. The aircraft will match the cross section of the A320 almost exactly, as Chinese designers mix conventional design features with technology a generation ahead of the aircraft’s aging Western competitors.
China Southern Airlines is seeking a further capital injection from the central government following the 3 billion yuan (US$440 million) it received last year, says Chairman Si Xianmin. The company will also report a bigger profit in the second half of the year than the 38 million yuan it achieved in the first, Si tells Dow Jones newswires.
Mitsubishi Aircraft will build aluminum wing boxes for its MRJ regional jet, backing away from the ambitious plan to use composites while announcing a three-month delay to the program. Composite would not have saved as much weight as expected, said Mitsubishi, adding that metal structure will be more easily adapted to different versions of the aircraft. A third version could be added to the lineup, with the manufacturer considering a 100-seat stretch of the MRJ.
