Joint venture rolls out the first Airbus built in China

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

European aviation giant Airbus is set to deliver the first A320 airplane assembled at its factory in China, in a symbolic event further marking the nation’s global rise.

The first plane to be made at plant in northern Tianjin, the only Airbus factory outside Europe, will be delivered to Dragon Aviation Leasing and will be flown by Sichuan Airlines, a regional Chinese air carrier…

The plane took its first test flight last month with the first Chinese test engineer trained by Airbus.

Ten middle-distance A319/320 aircraft will be delivered by the end of the year, before the factory starts to churn out up to four planes a month before the end of 2011…

The joint venture factory, about 120 kilometres (72 miles) southeast of Beijing, is 51 percent owned by Airbus, subsidiary of the European group EADS, and 49 percent by a Chinese aviation consortium.

At the inauguration Airbus chief-executive-officer Thomas Enders said the company’s “new house” would become “the jump off point for the future development of Airbus in China and in the region..”

The decision to build the China plant was based on strong growth estimates that expect the nation to buy up to 2,800 passenger and transport planes over the next 20 years…

Smart business decisions. The kind that require intelligent multilateral cooperation between nations.

Whining about a global economy will neither slow down growth nor make your nation and society a partner in the process.