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.
Shanghai-based budget carrier Spring Airlines has won permission to fly internationally and says it plans to have 100 aircraft in service by 2015. The Civil Aviation Administration will let Spring fly to Japan, South Korea and Russia, as well as the self-governing Chinese cities Hong Kong and Macau. Its fleet of narrowbody aircraft, currently numbering 13, generated revenue of 894 million yuan (US$130 million) in the first half of 2009, up 20% from a year earlier.
The first launch of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1) is scheduled for Aug. 11 after a successful engine test last week. The agency that is developing the rocket, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, assembled the launcher on Aug. 1, uniting the South Korean solid-fuel second stage with the Russian-built liquid-fuel first stage. It will now undergo one week of checks before launch from the Naro Space Center 485 kilometers (301 miles) south of Seoul.
Six Airbus A380s due for delivery to Thai Airways will be delayed by about two years. The delay will ease liquidity problems for Thai, which has also said that it will be hard to economically deploy the A380. The first Thai A380 will arrive in the third quarter of 2012. It was previously due at the end of next year.
