Airbus said Thursday an announcement could be made “in about 10 days” on which Chinese city will be the sole candidate for an assembly line to build its medium-range A320 jets.
“It is necessary to wait about 10 days or two weeks to know which city will be selected,” Airbus China president Laurence Barron told AFP, without being more specific.
Sources said Chinese authorities and the European aerospace giant had chosen the northern city of Tianjin for the assembly line. The other cities under consideration were Shanghai, Xian and Zhuhai.
The issue was one of the items on the agenda for French Transport Minister Dominique Perben during his four-day visit to China that began on Thursday.
However Barron said a final decision on whether Airbus, which is 80 percent owned by European Aerospace, Defence and Space (EADS) and 20 percent by BAE Systems of Britain, would actually decide to go ahead with the assembly line was still “some months” away.
Airbus EADS had said in March that it was aiming to make a decision by September.
If the project is confirmed, it would be the first time single-aisle commercial airliners would be entirely produced in China.
The feasibility proposal for assembly operations in China was a key sweetener in a deal announced in December last year for Airbus to supply China with 150 mid-range A320 planes worth nearly 10 billion dollars at list prices.
The deal was clinched when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited France and the Airbus headquarters.
China’s fledgling aircraft manufacturing industry lacks the technology to compete with Airbus and Seattle-based Boeing, but it has said it wants to compete with the industry leaders by 2020.
But like its car industry of 10 years ago, China’s aviation sector needs technology transfers to allow it to catch up with the developed markets.
