China Eastern Airlines said Thursday it had agreed with Europe-based Airbus to buy 50 A320 airliners with a list price of 3.22 billion dollars, in the latest sign of the country's aviation boom. China Eastern said in an announcement to the Hong Kong stock exchange the aircraft would be delivered in stages from 2012 to 2015 and would expand its capacity by 11.24 percent including the fleet of its Shanghai Airlines subsidiary.
The airline did not disclose the price of its acquisition but said the Airbus consortium had granted it "significant price concessions... which will mainly affect the depreciation of the aircraft in the operation cost of the company." The announcement marks the latest in a line of large deals by some of the bigger players in China's burgeoning aviation market.
Last week Shandong Airlines said it planned to buy 15 Boeing passenger planes worth up to 1.2 billion dollars, to be delivered between 2014 and 2015. In November, Air China said it had agreed to buy 20 passenger planes from Airbus in deal worth 4.49 billion dollars. Half the planes would be A330s and the other half were to be A350 series aircraft, the company said.
Also in November, China Southern Airlines said it had agreed to buy 36 planes from Airbus for 3.78 billion US dollars. In September, Hong Kong-based carrier Cathay Pacific said it had confirmed an order for 30 long-range A350 Airbus aircraft with a book price of 7.82 billion dollars - the biggest single order in the carrier's history. China's rapidly expanding economy has seen the country's aviation sector grow at a blistering pace over the last few years, with few analysts seeing any likelihood of a slowdown.
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