Jets and Yachts

China’s jet-set to get more jets

by Shawn C., 09 July 2012

There’s a booming aviation industry in China, but unless you’re in the market for a Shengyang J-11 or Chengdu J-10 jet fighter, you probably haven’t heard much about it.

This is, however, a situation that is rapidly changing. China’s growing economic strength coupled with massive internal infrastructure growth has seen its civilian aviation industry boom – to the point where it now makes economic sense for Chinese aviation companies to start building regional and small commercial airliners in order to compete in a domestic airline market currently dominated by Boeing and Airbus.
 
 

In the meantime, China’s business executives and new-rich are starting to get the same personal travel bug that their counterparts in the West enjoy – after all, why should you travel business class when you can have a private jet at your beck and call whenever you feel the need to do some shopping in Hong Kong?

And according to business jet manufacturer Embraer, Chinese buyers are expected to purchase up to 630 executive jets within 10 years – a potential market worth about US$21 billion.
 

So Embraer has secured Chinese government approval to assemble the Legacy 600/650 business jets in Harbin, China, with the first aircraft delivered late next year. In a deal with AVIC – China’s state-owned aerospace conglomerate. The Legacy 600/650 series is a mid-size business jet that will seat up to 13 passengers and travel up to 7,200km, depending on the model. Actor Jacky Chan took delivery of one earlier this year.

AVIC is not stopping with Embraer, however, and are also in discussion with Cessna over a partnership agreement that will see Cessna’s Citation Sovereign assembled in Chengdu by 2014.

All this means that not only are China’s skies going to become increasingly crowded, but China’s jet-set are about to get, well, even more jets to ‘set’ around in.

  

 
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