Airbus Group is being flooded with orders and needs to produce more planes because China needs them. Spring Air has placed an order of 60 Airbus A320neos having a list price of $6.3 billion last December. It wants additional aircraft more than it has ordered due to the increasing demand in a country designed to become the largest air travel and aerospace market in the world in 20 years.
For Airbus Group to meet the rising demand for orders, the aircraft maker set up a final assembly facility in Tianjin, near Beijing. Aside from making a monthly average of four A320 jets in China, Airbus plans a groundbreaking ceremony next week in Tianjin for a completion and delivery service for the A330 widebody jets. Spring Airlines Co. told Airbus to manufacture more planes as China needs them, reports Bloomberg.
"Airbus isn't producing fast enough," Stephen Wang, vice president of China's biggest budget airline, said in an interview in Singapore Tuesday. "There isn't overcapacity in China. For the Chinese aviation industry, there's still at least 10 golden years that is 10 years of big growth."
Spring Air is willing to get any deferred or cancelled orders from other airline companies. The Shanghai-based carrier is waiting for the delivery of 11 A320s from Airbus this year and there will be an addition of the same number of aircraft to its fleet yearly in the coming five years.
Because of the overwhelming demand for aircraft orders, Tom Williams, Airbus chief operating officer makes sure the jets get done. He needs to get the Airbus' latest A350 production fast enough, roll out an upgraded A330 version and increase the rate at which the Toulouse-based firm produces its best-selling A320 series. As of the moment, 40 of the airliners a month are introduced in Airbus' four assembly factories located in Toulouse, Tianjin in China, Hamburg and Mobile, Alabama, according to The Telegraph.
As Spring Air wants to become the first budget airline to fly to Pyongyang, North Korea, it has submitted to the Civil Aviation Authority of China an application. However, it is not expecting approval this year because of the rising tension that North Korea made regarding the conducted nuclear test, the Business Times reports.
Spring Air also plans of increasing flights to Southeast Asia, South Korea and Japan to meet the large demand of Chinese who are willing to travel. Airbus is already having double time to increase its production at a fast pace to deliver the ordered aircrafts on time as well as to cater to other orders from other airline company such as the Philippine Airlines which ordered 6 A350-900s.
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