Air China, China Eastern, China Southern and Shenzhen Airlines have ordered almost 300 new aircraft from Airbus. All are jets from the A320 Neo family.
China is already the second largest aviation market in the world and will soon overtake the US. Aircraft manufacturers are therefore particularly concerned about customers from the Asian country. Since these are mostly state-run, they often order together. So now again. Airbus can now look forward to a huge order from four Chinese airlines.
Air China, China Eastern, China Southern and Shenzhen Airlines have ordered a total of 292 A320 Neo Family aircraft, Airbus said on Friday (July 1). However, the final details still have to be finalized. “As soon as the relevant criteria are met, these orders will be included in the backlog,” Airbus said.
This is how the orders are divided between the airlines
With large bulk orders from China, it is usually difficult – no matter which aircraft manufacturer – to see through whether all the orders are really brand new or whether they include conversions of options into firm orders, for example. However, an Airbus spokesman told aeroTELEGRAPH that in this case there are actually 292 truly new orders.
They are divided as follows: Air China will receive 64 aircraft, its subsidiary Shenzhen Airlines 32, China Eastern 100 and China Southern 96. There is no official information on the various models. However, aeroTELEGRAPH learned from a well-informed source that the A319 Neo, A320 Neo and A321 Neo should all be represented – but no A321 XLR.
Competitor Boeing is still waiting for Max’s return
Boeing is likely to be particularly annoyed by Airbus’ success, as its 737 Max has still not returned to commercial flight operations in China. Although the model has officially been given the green light again, the airlines have not yet gotten beyond test flights.