Order Raises Total Asian Orders For Super Jumbo To Fifty Aircraft

China Southern Airlines Co. has signed a contract committing itself to the purchase of five Airbus A380's, a sale worth $1.4 billion at list price.

"We hope that the acquiring of the A380 will help China become a powerful civil aviation giant," said China Southern Chairman Lui Shaoyong forwarded by Airbus to Bloomberg and other media. Airbus' CEO Noel Forgeard had previously communicated that he was expecting the order before the end of the month.

Some 50 of the over 150 orders and commitments for the aircraft have come from Asian customers, confirming that China may in fact be the world's fastest growing aviation market. This statement is supported by Boeing's announcement on Friday that it had sold 60 aircraft to a number of Chinese airlines as well, surpassing in one transaction all of the A380's sales in the region to date.

The A380 is expected to enter service in 2006, two years before the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. China Southern Airlines' fleet is composed of 232 large and medium aircraft on over 600 worldwide routes.

FMI: www.airbus.com, www.cs-air.com/en/