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.
Philippine startup Spirit of Manila Airlines will cater to the country’s millions of overseas guest workers with planned services to the Middle East and nearby East Asian destinations. With one McDonnell Douglas MD-83 now available, the carrier says it will “soon” begin flights from Clark Airport in central Luzon. It expects to introduce one more MD-83, a Boeing 747-300 and a 747-400 in September and November, ready for full-scale operations to begin in December.
AirAsia Bhd. is proving that the budget model is as resilient in Southeast Asia as elsewhere, with the Malaysian airline reporting a second-quarter net profit of 139.2 million ringgit (US$39.7 million), supported almost entirely by a healthy operating result. While Asian network carriers have achieved profits only because of one-time gains such as forex revaluations and government handouts, AirAsia Bhd, the core company in the AirAsia group, achieved a core operating profit of 128 million ringgit, up from 30 million ringgit a year before.
South Korea’s two main airlines made profits only because of one-time gains in the second quarter. Korean Air made a profit thanks to foreign exchange gains in the second quarter, but lost money on operations. The operating loss for the airline, the world’s largest cargo carrier, worsened slightly to 127.3 billion won from 116.4 billion won a year before as sales fell 16% to 2.07 trillion won.
