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.
Xi’an Aircraft has begun building a factory at Tianjin, China, that will complete wings for the Airbus A320 family assembled at another plant in the city. Xi’an, which is being merged into a focused transport aircraft subsidiary of national conglomerate Avic, is already building wing boxes for the A320 family. The new plant will fit the wing boxes with equipment so they do not need to be sent to Britain and back before delivery to the Chinese final assembly line.
Australia’s need to replace its ancient de Havilland Canada Caribous is offering an opportunity to rebalance and simplify the country’s complex transport aircraft fleet. Planners are considering wider options than simply ordering a suitable number of direct replacements for the Caribous—ether C-27J Spartans from L-3 and Alenia or C-295s from EADS.
Indonesia’s Lion Air will ground its 11 McDonnell Douglas MD-80s this year, replacing them with Boeing 737-900ERs. The MD-80s will be kept as stand-bys. Lion Air also has MD-90s, which remain in service.The carrier is renewing and greatly expanding its fleet with 178 Boeing 737-900ERs, of which 19 have been delivered.
