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.
The move marks China Eastern’s first attempt at opening a new intercontinental route this year. While rivals Hainan Airlines, Air China and China Southern have each moved into several new long-haul markets, China Eastern has merely increased frequencies on current routes.
The Shanghai-based airline has also made a preliminary plan to double its service frequency to New York and to beef up its daily San Francisco service by substituting Boeing 777-300ERs for Airbus A330-200s.
But HNA is not likely to pay as much as the values mentioned by Spanish newspaper El Confidencial, which first reported the Chinese conglomerate’s interest in the carrier, the source says.
