BEIJING - Chinese
airlines are expected to double their fleet to
more than 1,500 aircraft by 2010 as domestic air
passenger and cargo volumes grow, a senior
aviation official was quoted as saying May 6.
Chinese airlines will increase their
combined fleet to 1,580 airplanes from 863
currently by 2010, Gao Hongfeng, vice minister of
the Civil Aviation Administration of China, told
the China Daily.
By 2025, the fleet could
be expanded to 4,000 aircraft, up from about 500
planes in 2000, he said without giving a dollar
figure. "[This] expectation is based on the robust
growth of the domestic
travel market," Gao was
quoted as saying. He predicted China's domestic
air travel market would grow 14% annually through
2010 and 11% annually from 2011 to 2020.
China's 27 airlines handled 138 million
passengers last year, up 15.5% from the previous
year, the China Daily said. Cargo handled surged
13.8% during the same period.
China, the
world's fastest-expanding major aviation market,
is a pivotal battleground between Boeing and
Airbus, a subsidiary of European aerospace firm
EADS. Boeing has forecast that China will need to
buy more than 2,000 planes over the next two
decades. George Liu, Boeing China's vice president
of communications, said his company's goal is to
keep its market share in China for many years to
come.
As of December 2005, 542 of the 888
commercial jetliners operating on the Chinese
mainland - or 61% - were Boeing planes. Chinese
Vice Premier Wu Yi signed an order in April for 80
Boeing 737s worth US$5.2 billion. Boeing hopes to
match or exceed its record sale of 120 aircraft
worth $11.8 billion to China last year, the China
Daily said.
"China is, and will remain,
Boeing's most important and largest overseas
market for years to come and that will create more
quality jobs for American design engineers, test
pilots and assembly line workers," Liu was quoted
as saying.
The China Daily quoted an
Airbus report as saying China needs at least 200
large airplanes such as the 555-seat Airbus A380,
the biggest passenger aircraft to date, over the
next 20 years. Airbus has steadily ramped up its
fleet in China, with its market share increasing
to 34% in 2005 from just 7% in 1995. "We aim to
dominate half of China's market by 2013," the
newspaper quoted the Airbus report as saying.
