TIANJIN, China, June 25 (UPI) -- The first Airbus A320 aircraft assembled in China has been delivered to a national leasing firm at a ceremony at the Final Assembly Line China plant in Tianjin.
The delivery, in the same week as a major bank financing agreement, marks what Airbus hopes will be a big push into the lucrative Chinese commercial aviation market to give it a 50 percent share by 2012. It currently estimates its market share at 40 percent.
Airbus President and CEO Tom Enders officially handed over the plane to the chairman of Dragon Aviation Leasing in front of more than 1,000 guests including the Tianjin Communist Party Secretary Zhang Gaoli; the mayor of Tianjin, Huang Xingguo; as well as the German secretary of state for economics and technology, Hartmut Schauerte.
Sichuan Airlines will lease and operate the plane. Sichuan started operations in 1988, and it was the first airline to use the A320 family aircraft, including the A318, A319 and A321, starting in 1995. Each aircraft in the A32 family use fly-by-wire controls, and all share the same cockpit layout. Sichuan now operates 40 Airbus A320 family planes, making it the largest airline in China with an all-Airbus fleet.
Sichuan will fly the single-aisle aircraft in a two-class configuration with eight first-class seats and 156 economy seats, deploying it in domestic trunk routes between the airlines base at Chengdu and major cities including Beijing and Shanghai starting this week.
Enders called the delivery at the state-of-the-art FALC factory in Tianjin a milestone in Airbus's strategic long-term relationship with China.
FALC is a joint venture between Airbus and a consortium of Chinese organizations including the Tianjin Free Trade Zone and the China Aviation Industry Corp. The factory is scheduled to produce 11 A319 and A320 aircraft by the end of the year and ramp up production to four planes a month by the end of 2011.
Around 3,900 A320 family planes have been delivered to more than 300 clients worldwide, Airbus said. Nearly 500 of the planes are currently operated by 11 operators in China.
Toulouse-based Airbus also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China this week. The agreement could see upwards of $3 billion in aircraft financing released over the next five years that will secure the sale of around 70 aircraft set to roll off the production line at FALC. Purchase and lease-back transactions will be provided directly to Chinese airlines.
ICBC will also consider financing for other Airbus aircraft delivered into China from factories in Europe and elsewhere. The bank set up its wholly owned subsidiary ICBC Financial Leasing in Tianjin, China's sixth-largest city by population, in 2007. Tianjin had nearly 12 million people in 2008.
Airbus executives have told aviation media outlets that they hope "very soon" to have a Chinese buyer for their A350, a long-range, wide-body aircraft whose fuselage and wings will be made mostly from extremely strong but lightweight carbon fiber reinforced plastic. The fuel-efficient A350 will compete with Boeing's 777 and 787 aircraft.
