Airbus Updates No.4638

 

China Southern orders 102 A320neo, Xiamen orders 35

China Southern Airlines (CZ, Guangzhou) and its subsidiary Xiamen Airlines (MF, Xiamen) have ordered a total of 137 aircraft from Airbus, China Southern revealed in a stock exchange filing. A total of 102 A320neo aircraft will go to China Southern, while Xiamen’s fleet will be updated with 35 of the type.

Deliveries for China Southern are set to take place in batches from 2028 to 2032, while Xiamen’s new aircraft will start entering the fleet in 2029 with final deliveries expected also in 2032.

The filing states that China Southern and Xiamen Airlines received a significant discount compared to the list price.

China Southern’s fleet already includes 178 A320neo family aircraft, while Xiamen Airlines operates 19 A320neo family aircraft in its fleet.

The announcement comes shortly after Germany's chancellor, Friedrich Merz, announced during a state visit to Beijing that China was looking to purchase up to 120 Airbus aircraft. Airbus operates an A320neo final assembly line in Tianjin.

Airbus Updates No.3806

 

Airbus Wins Order for 40 A320neos from Xiamen Airlines

by Gregory Polek

 - September 22, 2022, 10:14 AM

A China Southern Airlines Airbus A319 takes off from Hamburg on a delivery flight on February 18, 2022. At the time the airline and its subsidiaries operated more than 300 A320-family narrowbodies. (Photo: Airbus)

China’s Xiamen Airlines has placed a firm order for 40 Airbus A320neo-family jets, the carrier’s parent company, China Southern Airlines, reported in a filing with the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Thursday. The filing valued the transaction at $4.848 billion and noted that the airline won price concessions comparable to those it had negotiated in past deals.

The contract follows a broader deal involving four Chinese airlines announced July 1 that included a China Southern order for 96 A320neo-family aircraft worth $12.25 billion. Delivery schedules call for the first 30 airplanes from that order to go to China Southern in 2024, then 40 in 2025, 19 in 2026, and seven in 2027. The most recent filing said only that deliveries of the 40-aircraft order for Xiamen will take place in stages from 2024 to 2027.

The deal comes as another blow for Boeing and its 737 Max, 24 of which China Southern operated and 10 of which Xiamen flew before the model’s grounding in March 2019 following two fatal accidents involving Max 8s. Nearly every relevant global civil aviation authority has allowed the Max to return to service apart from China’s, which continues to evaluate data from test flights.

China’s CAA became the first to ground the Max following the twin crashes that claimed the lives of 346 people. The CAAC issued an airworthiness directive (AD) that would have ostensibly allowed operators in that country to return the airplane to service soon. However, some nine months later, the Max remains grounded in the country against a backdrop of strained diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the People's Republic.