Airbus lands China order for 300 jets as Xi visits France
Big aviation contract is ‘an excellent signal in the current context’, says French President Emmanuel Macron
Paris — Airbus signed a deal worth tens of billions of dollars late on Monday to sell 300 aircraft to China, coinciding with a visit to Europe by Chinese President Xi Jinping and matching a China record held by US rival Boeing. The deal between Airbus and China’s state buying agency, China Aviation Supplies Holding Company, which regularly co-ordinates headline-grabbing deals during diplomatic visits, will include 290 A320-family jets and 10 A350 wide-body jets. French officials said the deal was worth about €30bn ($33.8bn) at catalogue prices. Planemakers usually grant significant discounts. The larger-than-expected order, which matches an order for 300 Boeing planes when US Donald Trump visited Beijing in 2017, follows a year-long vacuum of purchases in which China failed to place significant orders amid global trade tensions. It also comes as the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX has left uncertainty over Boeing’s immediate hopes for a major jet order as the result of any warming o...
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