Photo: Courtesy of Airbus

The recovery of Chinese economy has provided a strong foundation for the aviation market, with the Europe-based airplane producer confirmed clear upward trajectories in the number of deliveries are witnessed, and more deliveries expected next year. 

The aircraft which the Airbus delivered to Chinese market only represents 6 percent of the global deliveries over the first quarter of this year, mainly due to the COVID-19 outbreak, but the deliveries represent roughly 25 percent of the global deliveries at end of this year, George Xu, CEO of Airbus China said Tuesday.

His remark came at the delivery ceremony of an aviation lessor and financier GECAS has taken delivery of its first A320 Family aircraft assembled at Airbus factory in Tianjin. The plane is the 509th aircraft completed and delivered by the Airbus Tianjin factory. 

Xu said in 2019, the production rate of the Tianjin assembly line reached 6 per month, and to date the Tianjin factory has assembled and delivered more than 500 A320 series aircraft.

Although the delivery target in China for this year is about 100 aircraft, which well below the original plan before COVID-19, Xu said, next year, they will have more cooperations, including the system installation of the fuselage section of the A320 series aircraft and extending the A330 wide-body work to the latest generation of A350 aircraft. 

We are about to deliver A350 from Tianjin in the first half of next year, he said. 

Global aviation market saw a steep drop of the passenger volume, not only on global markets, but also in China at the beginning of the year, but the Chinese market has witnessed a strong recovery. 

Dong Zhipeng, an official from Civil Aviation Administration of China said recently that China's civil aviation industry was leading the world. In November, the total turnover and passenger traffic recovered to 93.5 percent and 93.8 percent of the same period last year, respectively. 

International Air Transport Association also said China will lead the recovery of the world airline industry thanks to the success of virus control measures ahead of vaccine distribution and growing demand for air cargo. 

China is a very important strategic market, irrespective of COVID-19. We have made strong progress and in the next 10 years, we are looking forward to more solid strategic projects in China, Xu said.