BEIJING -
The China Aviation Supplies Import & Export
Group Corporation (CASGC) signed a general
purchase agreement with Boeing to buy seventy
B737-700/800 aircraft here on November 20, the
biggest single purchase agreement in China's
aviation history.
The catalog price of the
aircraft purchase agreement is US$4 billion, and
the planes will be delivered to eight leading
Chinese airlines between 2006 and 2008; Air China,
China Southern
Airlines, China Eastern
Airlines, Shanghai Airlines, Xiamen
Airlines, Shandong Airlines, Hainan Airlines and
Shenzhen Airlines.
Since China bought its
first Boeing aircraft in the 1970s, the total
number of Boeing aircraft purchased by China has
reached 534, accounting for two thirds of the
country's fleet, according to Yang Guoqing, vice
minister of the General Administration of Civil
Aviation of China.
Earlier this year,
Chinese airlines had placed a $72 billion order
with the manufacturer for 60 787 Dreamliner
aircraft. With the current order added to this,
Boeing was expected to win more orders in 2005
than rival Airbus, the first time in five years it
achieved this feat.
The 737 is Boeing's
best-selling model and its workhorse for
medium-distance routes. The plane, which can carry
between 110 and 189 people in standard three-class
seating layouts, costs between $44 million and $74
million each. Boeing product and services
marketing director Randy Tinseth said in a Hong Kong interview with
Bloomberg last week that "China will need 2,600
planes in the next 20 years and the vast majority
of them will be single-aisle planes'' like the
737. "[The single-aisle aircraft market] will be
the fastest-growing market'' because such craft
are suited for flying regional routes, he said.
In the next 20 years, China, one of the
world's largest civil aviation markets, is
expected to need over 3,000 new aircraft.
