China Aviation Supplies has signed an agreement with Airbus for the acquisition of 30 A330 Family aircraft and 100 A320 Family aircraft.

The 30 A330s are the firm up of the commitment signed in June 2015.

The GTA was signed in Beijing by Li Hai, president of CAS, and Fabrice Brégier, president of Airbus, in the presence of Chinese premier Li Keqiang and visiting German chancellor Angela Merkel.

“We are grateful to CAS, one of our longest standing customers, for its continued confidence in Airbus and in the versatile A330 Family as well as the best-selling A320 Family,” said Brégier.

“With these 30 A330 options now firmed up, CAS’ total number of orders for the popular Airbus widebody is this year 75 aircraft.

“This strong demand in China for the A330 has been the key driver behind our decision to set up an A330 Completion and Delivery Centre in Tianjin, China next to the A320 Family final assembly line and delivery centre in Tianjin, which has assembled and delivered more than 240 Airbus single aisle aircraft.

“This will enable us to be even closer to our customers and to take our long-standing mutual beneficial partnership with China to a new height.” 

The first agreements on setting up an A330 C&DC in Tianjin, China were signed by Airbus and Chinese partners in March 2014 and witnessed by French president Francois Hollande and visiting Chinese president Xi Jinping.

According to the Airbus global market forecast, China is leading the world in passenger growth. China’s domestic air traffic will become the world’s largest within the next ten years, and traffic volumes will quadruple in the next 20 years.

In the next 20 years, Airbus forecasts a demand in China for some 5,400 new passenger and freighter aircraft including 1,700 widebody aircraft like the A330, A350 and A380.