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.
Mainland China will have 244 civil airports in 2020, up from 147 at the end of 2006, according to civil aviation administration plans. Currently, 52% of counties have an airport within 100 km (62 miles) or a 1 1/2 hour drive. That will rise to 75% in 2010 and more than 80% by 2002.
The most profitable of China’s big-three airlines, Air China, has delivered a 57% surge in 2007 net earnings to CNY4.2 billion (US$593 million) on operating revenues of CNY49.7 billion (US$7 billion), up 14.6%. Foreign-exchange windfalls flattered the result, as has been common across the Chinese airline industry since the country began to let the yuan appreciate against the dollar in 2005. The yuan value of the airlines’ large dollar-denominated debt falls as the local currency rises, and the gain is booked as profit.
Australia will consider buying Boeing E/A-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft following confirmation of its order for 24 of the standard two-seat version of the Super Hornet, the F/A-18F. In a review of air combat requirements, the Labor government now endorses the Super Hornet as “an excellent aircraft capable of meeting any known threat in the region,” even though Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has spent months criticizing the hasty process in which the former Liberal National administration decided to buy it last year.
