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.
Taiwanese airline Far Eastern Air Transport has suspended operations after running out of cash while looking for an investor. The company, which flies as far as Indonesia, Japan and South Korea, hasn’t given up hope of resuming flights, however. Singapore’s Jetstar Asia has been considering an investment in the business, turning it into the Taiwanese offshoot of the Qantas group’s Jetstar brand. Far Eastern Air Transport has been under protection from its creditors since February.
Bank of China’s aircraft lessor, BOC Aviation, will borrow about $1 billion this year to take advantage of an expected surge in sale-and-leaseback business. The Singapore-based company still has a $1 billion line of credit on tap from its parent after buying and leasing back two Air Canada 777-300ERs, says CEO Robert Martin. “We can easily finance another 20 aircraft this year, a mix of narrowbodies and widebodies,” Martin tells The DAILY.
Japan Airlines has posted its first annual profit in three years, saying its bottom line for the year to March 31 was in the black by a scant JPY16.9 billion (US$164 million) after tax, compared with a loss of JPY16.3 billion a year earlier. Operating profit was JPY90.0 billion, only 4.0% of the year’s revenue, JPY2,230.4 billion. The revenue figure was 3.1% on a year earlier, mostly because a former subsidiary was no longer consolidated in the group’s accounts.
