Report by : Gan Yung Chyan, KUCINTA SETIA / Image : Gallop Air LinkedIn
Recently, many Chinese media have reported the news that the domestic aircraft C919 has received foreign orders for the first time, saying that the C919 has gone abroad for the first time and achieved a breakthrough in the international market. The buyer is Gallop Air of Brunei, which also has a Chinese name called Qiji Airlines.
According to reports, at the 20th China-ASEAN Expo held in Nanning, Guangxi, Gallop Air signed a letter of intent to purchase 30 domestically produced aircraft for a total of US$2 billion. Among them, 15 are C919 passenger aircraft and the other 15 are ARJ-21 aircraft. Next, it needs to undergo type certification by the Civil Aviation Authority of Brunei Darussalam, and it is not scheduled to be put into flight operations until the third quarter of 2024.
Gallop Air is a new company registered in Singapore in October 2021 and is headquartered in Brunei. Until now, it does not have any flight records for a single aircraft or route.
Mainland media reported that Gallop Air will become the first foreign airline in the world to use a Chinese-made passenger aircraft as its first flight model. The British airline history website said that this is a China-backed start-up company that plans to start operations in 2024.
According to Scramble, a well-known Dutch aviation magazine, Gallop Air is supported by Shaanxi Tianju Investment Group, the parent company of Tianju Aviation Co., Ltd. (referred to as Tianju Airlines).
Baidu information shows that Tianju Airlines is an air transportation enterprise initiated by Shaanxi Tianju Investment Group Co., Ltd. and Shaanxi Tianju General Aviation Co., Ltd. It has a registered capital of RMB 600 million and was established on 25 May 2015.
On the official website of Tianju Investment Group, the introduction to Tianju Airlines is as follows: “Tianju Airlines is committed to building the company into the world’s largest domestic aircraft operator and implementing the report spirit of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China with practical actions."
Regarding Gallop Air supported by Tianju Group, mainland media reports said that as an active participant in the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, it uses an all-China domestic large aircraft fleet, and joins hands with China's domestic large aircraft ARJ21 and C919 to operate flights in Asia and Oceania from Brunei. In the future, we plan to open routes from Bandar Seri Begawan to cities in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and other ASEAN countries.
In addition, information on the "LinkedIn" website also shows that this new airline with less than 50 employees mentioned Xi Jinping's "One Belt, One Road" in its self-introduction.
It seems that this is to use domestically produced aircraft to open up air routes for the "One Belt, One Road" initiative. The exact relationship between Gallop Air and Shaanxi Tianju Investment Group needs further verification, but Gallop Air's Chinese background may be difficult to clarify.
In addition, it is worth noting that as early as 2018, Tianju Airlines signed a letter of intent (LoI) with COMAC for the purchase of 30 ARJ21s, but so far it has not received any aircraft, nor has it started operating other aircraft.
A purchase letter of intent is not the same as an order contract. It is not an order, but a preliminary expression of interest, used to start the procurement process, while the purchase contract is the final legal agreement.
In other words, even if a purchase letter of intent is signed, there are still variables whether a transaction can actually be completed in the future. By the same token, what Gallop Air signed this time was just a purchase letter of intent.
According to official data from the Chinese Communist Party, 1,061 domestic C919 aircraft have been confirmed or intended to be ordered in China, but only two have been delivered so far.
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