Photo taken on Sept. 27, 2018 shows staff members working at Airbus' Tianjin final assembly line for the A320-family of jets in north China's Tianjin. (Xinhua/Li Ran)
BEIJING, July 7 (Xinhua) -- Major Chinese airlines Air China, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines and Shenzhen Airlines on July 1 successively announced big orders with European aircraft giant Airbus, and they will buy in total 292 A320 family aircraft from Airbus with 37.257 billion U.S. dollars.
It is a large-scale order for passenger aircraft announced by China's civil aviation industry for the first time in nearly three years.
-- Right time to meet post-COVID civil aviation market demand
According to these airlines, this aircraft transaction is in line with the development and market demands of China's civil aviation industry, which will help the companies optimize their fleet structure and replenish their long-term transport capacity.
Air China said that the transaction will help increase its transport capacity by approximately 10.4 percent.
China Eastern Airlines said that the aircraft introduced will be mainly put into the domestic trunk network market, serving high-yield routes.
China Southern Airlines said that the aircraft purchased in this transaction will help increase its transport capacity by about 13.0 percent.
After the outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic in early 2020, the market demand of the aviation industry declined sharply, resulting in the suspension of a large number of routes and the grounding of many aircraft. Since then, with the effective prevention and control of the epidemic, the domestic aviation market has recovered rapidly and even to the pre-epidemic level for a time.
However, in the first five months of 2022, a new wave of COVID-19 in several major Chinese cities hit the air transport industry hard, with single-day flights at the lowest point only 18 percent of the normal level.
After the end of May, the domestic aviation market began to recover slowly with the stable control of the epidemic. In June, the recovery accelerated, with the number of single-day flights increasing from 6,489 at the beginning of the month to a maximum of 10,609, and the number of single-day passenger traffic increasing from 445,000 at the beginning of the month to a maximum of 896,000.
Recently, China has changed the quarantine period of close-contact people and international travelers from "14 plus 7" to "7 plus 3", and China's civil aviation industry has ushered in the dawn of recovery, with confidence in the market further boosted.
Lin Zhijie, an expert from CARNOC.com, a website focusing on civil aviation, said the new orders from major Chinese airlines show that China, as the largest civil aircraft market, has strong market demand and development potential. Buying aircraft at this time also reflects these airlines' expectations for the recovery of the civil aviation market.
Xiong Wei, another expert from CARNOC.com, said although the domestic air passenger market is still in the doldrums, such large aircraft procurement orders shows that the airlines' confidence in the mid- and long-term market has not changed, because the healthy development of civil aviation cannot be separated from the continuous expansion of the fleets.
-- Outcome of favorable technology and years of China-Airbus cooperation
A320NEO is a revamped version of the A320 family of Airbus, and compared with the A320 family, A320NEO has achieved a 20 percent increase in single-seat fuel efficiency thanks to cabin and engine improvements. NEO is short for New Engine Option.
Li Xiaojin, head of the institute of aviation economics at the Civil Aviation University of China, said that after three years of epidemic, many airlines at home and abroad have canceled or postponed aircraft procurement plans, and these Chinese airlines can obtain large discounts for collective purchase at present.
Li also noted that the A320NEO aircraft has about 150 to 180 seats and a high comfort level, and it is suitable for air lines between domestic hub airports such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and is very popular among business travelers. Besides, this kind of aircraft uses many new technologies, new materials and new processes, and has low fuel consumption, making it cost-effective and environmentally friendly, Li added.
As a supplier, Airbus confirmed the orders on its official website as soon as it can. As of May this year, there were more than 2,070 Airbus aircraft in service in the Chinese mainland.
Experts said that the purchase of Airbus aircraft by China's major airlines once again confirms that the in-depth cooperation model between Airbus and China's aviation industry is highly recognized. In addition, Airbus has three final assembly lines in north China's Tianjin Municipality, which also shows the good synergistic and integrated development between the aircraft manufacturer and the domestic aviation industry.
Xiong Wei pointed out that for airlines, the better fuel economy of Airbus A320NEO will also help meet the increasingly stringent carbon emission requirements in the future and improve economic efficiency.
For Airbus, the deal is also a reassuring step to deeply cultivate the Chinese market, which will further facilitate the development of its final assembly plant in Tianjin and help expand its investment in research and development and supply chains in China, added Xiong, noting that overall, this transaction is another example of the strong economic ties between China and Europe and the win-win cooperation between the two sides.
-- Enough room for home-made C919, and others
China's aviation sector will continue to introduce aircraft from abroad in the short term as China's homegrown C919 aircraft has yet to be delivered.
Lin Zhijie pointed out that the 292 aircraft to be introduced from Airbus are equivalent to the number of aircraft introduced in the whole industry in one year before the epidemic, and the aircraft will be delivered in four to five years, which cannot meet the airlines' capacity demand in the next few years. Chinese airlines will need to buy more planes in the future, Lin added.
The hundreds of imported aircraft will not dent sales of the C919, and China's aviation market is huge, said a blogger focusing on aviation on the Chinese Twitter-like social media platform Weibo.
Besides, other major players in the global aviation market such as Bombardier Inc. in Canada and Embraer S.A. in Brazil can also obtain a place in the future Chinese aviation market through competition.
It must be noted that China is opening up wider and wider, and the Chinese market with 1.4 billion people is also big enough. In the future, China will cooperate with more market participants on the basis of equality, mutual benefits and market rules, with the aim to provide safe, comfortable, economical and suitable aircraft and services to the domestic civil aviation market.
(Edited by Gu Shanshan with Xinhua Silk Road, gushanshan.1987@163.com)
A single purchase
