China Agrees to Buy 8 More Boeing Jetliners
China announced Wednesday that it has agreed to buy eight more jets from Boeing in the biggest single deal of its campaign to modernize its civil air fleet this year.
An official of the national airline, Civil Aviation Administration of China, told the New China News Agency that it had signed a contract last weekend to buy one Boeing 747, two Boeing 767s and five Boeing 737-200s.
The news agency did not say how much CAAC will pay for the planes, but a single 747 sells for about $100 million. The 767 is valued at $55 million and the 737-200 at $20 million, making for a total package of at least $310 million.
Discussion of Deal
Boeing has scheduled a news conference here today at which T. A. Wilson, its chairman and chief executive, is expected to discuss the deal.
A company official said that, while the contract for the eight planes had already been signed, Boeing and China were still negotiating Wednesday night in an effort to expand the deal to include additional planes.
In the past few months, CAAC, which is soon to be broken up into a number of regional companies, has embarked on an extensive program of buying new aircraft abroad.
Early this year, it bought nine three-engine, 160-seat TU-154s from the Soviet Union and three wide-body A-310s from Airbus Industrie of France. In addition, China signed a contract with McDonnell Douglas last month for co-production of the MD-80 jetliner.
Over the past decade, Boeing has been the largest single supplier of commercial aircraft to China. Between 1972 and 1984, it sold at least 25 planes for a total of about $740 million.
CAAC has been buying new planes to replace the antiquated aircraft that China acquired from the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
It is also seeking to increase the number of planes on domestic routes in order to be able to carry more passengers. CAAC officials estimated last December that Chinese airlines will carry 6.5 million passengers this year, an increase of 18% over 1984.
The 18% figure understates the extent of the increase in demand for airline travel. Last year, an estimated 1.25 million people were turned away from CAAC offices in China because the flights they wanted were fully booked.
According to the Chinese announcement, the new Boeing aircraft will be delivered next fall and will be put into service on international routes and on the busiest domestic routes.
Boeing has agreed to help train Chinese pilots and ground personnel.
