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.
BEIJING – The latest export development of Avic’s JL-9 supersonic trainer is due to fly in mid-2015, with the manufacturer moving into production of parts and assemblies for the first aircraft. This improved version, given the export designation FTC-2000G, has been approved for sale abroad, reports International Aviation, the Chinese partner magazine of Aviation Week.
BEIJING—China’s three largest airlines have ordered or are negotiating deals for more than 100 commercial aircraft from Airbus and Boeing, including re-engined types from the European manufacturer, industry officials say. In contrast to the usual style of Chinese airliner orders as a new economic planning period approaches—in this case, the 2016-20 five-year plan—the deals that have been concluded or are under negotiation appear to be quite fractured, covering mostly small quantities of each aircraft type.
Upper ranks of the Chinese government have decided to split off the collection of factories and design institutes known as Avic Engine, say industry officials in China. The future of a separate subsidiary that is struggling to build a competitive civil turbofan, Avic Commercial Aircraft Engines (ACAE), is unconfirmed, but the unit must face a large risk of being folded into the mainstream aviation propulsion group, losing funding and priority.
