MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

China plans to buy 218 commercial aircraft this year

Airbus A320 with “significant price concessions”

China mainland carriers plan to order as many as 218 commercial aircraft this year in order to cope with an expected surge in demand for air travel in the coming years, state media reported this week.

Xinhua agency quoted Li Jiaxiang, director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), as saying that China's annual passenger volume is likely to reach 700 million by 2020, and double that by 2030.

Li also said that passenger transportation and cargo freight volumes this year are both expected to rise 12% to 260 million and 4.48 million tons respectively. Passenger volume in 2009 totalled 230 million people and cargo freight amounted to 4.46 million metric tons, Xinhua quoted Li as saying.

Li also mentioned that China will spend 90 billion Yuan on 25 airport expansion projects for the year.

The new orders for large commercial aircraft are expected to increase fleet size to more than 1.500, according to official figures.
Flag carrier, Air China, said last month it had agreed to buy 20 Airbus A320, with “significant price concessions” granted over prevailing list prices of 1.6 billion USD.

China Southern Airlines, the nation's biggest carrier by fleet size had anticipated last January that it was also planning to purchase 20 Airbus A320 and at a price significantly lower than the list price of about 1.5 billion USD.