A Chinese aviation company has signed an USD 22.8 billion agreement to purchase 140 planes from Airbus, an official statement said today.
The deal with China Aviation Supplies Holding Company involves purchase of 100 Airbus A320 planes and 40 A350 jets, the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission statement said.
In recent years, China's aviation market has expanded in size by about 10 per cent year-on-year on average, it said.
The deal will help to meet the country's fast-growing market demand, it said.
China's domestically-produced plane capacity was taken into consideration when the decision was made last Wednesday, the report said.
China is set to boost the development of its civil aviation industry to create a market expected to be worth more than a trillion yuan (about USD 147.2 billion) by 2020, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
China will build new civil airports, bringing the total to more than 500 by 2020, and support the opening of its low- altitude airspace, it said.
Both Airbus and Boeing have assembly plants in China considering the growing demand for new aircraft.
Airbus had delivered 153 aircraft to Chinese operators in 2016, its seventh consecutive year of more than 100 deliveries, AirbusChina said earlier this year.
A recent Boeing forecast said that China will need 6,810 new aircraft in the next 20 years at an estimated cost of USD one trillion.
Boeing has started construction of its first overseas facility in Chinese port city of Zhoushan as part of its plans to produce 737 planes.
Ray Conner, vice chairman of the Boeing Company said in May that China supplies 150-200 airplanes to Chinese customers a year, accounting for a quarter of Boeing's global delivery. One third of the jets are Boeing 737s.
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