Thai airline City Airways and Chinese aircraft leasing company ICBC Leasing are planning to purchase and lease 20 China-designed passenger planes, they said on Wednesday.
In a major vote of confidence for China's ambitious aircraft manufacturers, the two companies signed a memorandum of understanding with the Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (COMAC) on the sidelines of the Beijing Aviation Expo, according to a statement from the COMAC.
The orders will include 10 C919 aircraft and 10 ARJ21-700 aircraft. Financial details were not disclosed. The C919, a 150-seat jet designed for short-haul commercial use, is China's first large passenger aircraft. The ARJ21-700 is smaller, with 78 to 90 seats and a designed economic life of 60,000 flying hours or 20 calendar years. Earlier reports said China plans to roll the first C919 off the assembly line and run a test flight this year.
The ARJ21-700 was officially certified by the Civil Aviation Administration of China at the end of last year. City Airways board chairman Timothy Yan said the China-made jets will be deployed for domestic flights and routes to and from Thailand's neighboring countries.
The new deal will bring total orders of C919 and ARJ21-700 to 514 and over 300, said Tian Min, COMAC chief accountant. In a separate report, the COMAC said China is expected to add 6,218 new aircraft worth 803.7 billion U.S. dollars to its commercial fleet during the 2015-2034 period, bringing the total to 7,034.
The expanding economy of the world's most populous country is driving air travel growth, the COMAC said in a report, adding that the number of passenger planes in China's commercial fleet will grow by an average annual rate of 5.5 percent given an estimated yearly GDP growth of 5.8 percent.
The per capita number of flights taken by Chinese citizens will meanwhile rise from 0.29 in 2014 to 1.04 in 2030, it said. Globally, the COMAC projected that the number of passenger jets in the commercial fleet will more than double from 19,882 at the moment to nearly 42,000 in 2034.
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