Air Asia coming to China

Ruperd Reid Sino.uk Published: 2017-05-16 15:10:03
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Airasia plane prepare takeoff at Don Mueang International Airport, Bangkok's Thailand on January 15, 2017. [Photo: IC]

Airasia plane prepare takeoff at Don Mueang International Airport, Bangkok's Thailand on January 15, 2017. [Photo: IC]

Budget airline AirAsia looks set to launch flights in China after an agreement was signed with a local partner.

The airline currently operates flights in a variety of Asian countries including Malaysia, Thailand and Japan.

AirAsia already fly to China from some of these countries, but do not yet fly internally in China.

The new agreement, with local partner Everbright, will see flights start initially to and from Zhengzhou.

There have already been suggestions that AirAsia might now wish to diversify away from their Airbus fleet of aircraft and purchase China's latest model, the Comac C919.

The C919 is built by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) and offers a similar passenger capacity and range as rival aircraft made by Boeing and Airbus.

If the C919 is able to break the effective duopoly of these two firms, then airlines around the world will have an extra supplier to choose from when ordering new aircraft.

This should bring the prices of airliners down, and could ultimately result in lower ticket prices for passengers.

The aircraft also competes with regional jets such as the Embraer E-Jet, an aircraft used by a number of airlines in China for smaller markets.

The C919 are seen by analysts as a major step-forward in China being able to build competitive airliners domestically.

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