Airbus ships first kit to Chinese assembly plant
ju4 wa4i dia4n zo1ng he2 ba4o da4o :\n  By Tim Hepher\nPARIS, June 24 (Reuters) - European planemaker Airbus took a\nmajor step towards starting production in China when a kit of\nparts to be assembled in the northern port city of Tianjin left\na factory in Hamburg by river on Tuesday. It is the first time Airbus has embarked on final assembly\nof its planes outside Europe and comes amid 10,000 job cuts at\nhome as it cuts costs to survive a slide in the dollar.\nMcDonnell Douglas, which merged with Boeing <BA.N> in 1997,\nexperimented with assembling MD-80/MD-90 passenger jets in China\nsome two decades ago but the initiative was scrapped after less\nthan 40 jets were assembled in favour of deals to supply parts.\nAirbus, the jetliner subsidiary of European aerospace group\nEADS <EAD.PA>, is anxious to expand outside its domestic base to\nescape high costs imposed by a strong euro and to close a gap in\nthe past in selling planes to China compared with Boeing.\nIt agreed in 2006 to build an assembly plant southeast of\nBeijing to try to win a greater slice of fast-growing plane\ndemand from the world's fourth-largest economy.\nRISING DEMAND\nThe kit containing the fuselage, wings, cockpit and other\nsegments of a 150-seat A320 jet was loaded onto a barge for a\nshort trip down the River Elbe to Hamburg's container port. The\ncargo will be transferred to a Chinese container ship for the\none-month trip to Tianjin.\n"It is a complete aircraft now on its way to China. The\nwhole cargo weighs 93 tonnes," spokesman Tore Prang said.\nAirbus, created from a union of French, German, Spanish and\nBritish planemaking assets in the 1970s, has always moved\naircraft segments between plants in Europe as part of an\nindustrial jigsaw designed to preserve national workshare.\nBut the Chinese plant represents its first effort to move to\nassembly outside Europe.\nPlans to build civil Airbus freighter planes in Alabama are\nin doubt after U.S. auditors questioned a separate contract to\nsupply tanker planes to the U.S. Air Force, on which the Alabama\nproduction line for A330 cargo planes depends.\nThe A320 family of single aisle planes comprises the A318,\nA319, the A320 and A321. It is the workhorse of the world's\nshort-to-medium range airliner fleet alongside Boeing's 737.\nDespite jitters also spreading through the global airline\nindustry, triggering deferrals of orders from some U.S.\nairlines, Airbus expects overall Chinese demand for commercial\naircraft to grow fivefold in 20 years in a market worth some\n$200 billion.\nIt expects growing passenger traffic to spur overall Chinese\ndemand for 2,670 new passenger planes in the next 20 years.\nMost of the planes built in Tianjin will be for Chinese\ndomestic use.\nThe Tianjin plant will deliver its first aircraft in 2009\nand production there will reach four a month by 2011, easing\noverstretched assembly lines at Hamburg and Toulouse in France.\nAirbus plans to increase total single-aisle production from\n34 aircraft a month now to 36 by the end of this year, 38 in the\nthird quarter of next year and 40 by the first quarter of 2010.\nThese targets include Chinese output.\nOnly Airbus and Boeing supply jetliners in the 100-seat-plus\nrange but China plans to encroach on the lower end of the market\nwith its own 90-seat regional jet and could eventually vie for a\nslice of the large aircraft market, industry analysts say.\n((paris.equities@reuters.com; 33 1 4949 5452; Reuters\nMessaging: tim.hepher.reuters.com@reuters.net;editing by Ian\nJones))\nKeywords: AIRBUS CHINA/