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China's plane demand surges but bumpy ride ahead

AFP, Shanghai
ALREADY Asia's biggest aircraft buyer, China is developing its own passenger planes and building scores of airports but its aviation expansion faces turbulence from slowing growth and inadequate infrastructure.
As the country's carriers spend billions on jets to serve a growing middle class taking to the skies in ever-increasing numbers, passengers face constant delays and longer flight times owing to military limits on airspace and poor management.
Three of the mainland's airports are among the world’s 20 busiest, with Beijing in global second place on 78 million passengers a year, behind only Atlanta in the United States.
At the same time, Beijing was worst in the world for delays last year with only 18 percent of flights on time, followed immediately by Shanghai, according to the website www.flightstats.com.
Angry Chinese passengers have on occasion stormed onto runways, fought with staff and
smashed equipment, with dozens refusing to leave a delayed Hong Kong Airlines flight bound for Shanghai last week, reports said.
China is scrambling to address the rapid growth in demand by ramping up investments in aviation infrastructure.
The country’s airlines carried 350 million passengers last year,
up nearly 11 percent from 2012, official figures show, and the country’s civil aviation authority said it will have more than 230 airports by 2015, up from 193 last year.
China Eastern agreed to buy 80 of US aircraft maker Boeing's 737 jets, valued at more than $8 billion, earlier this month after Europe's Airbus won a similar-
sized order from China Southern. Regional outfit Shandong Airlines and yet-to-be-launched budget operator 9 Air took 50 Boeing 737s each.
"We see Chinese urbanisation at record levels. Chinese GDP (gross domestic product), it's still at very good levels. Domestic consumption is growing," said Jose Eduardo Costas, senior vice president for market intelligence at Brazil aircraft maker Embraer.
"All these are very positive drivers," he said.
But he added that "infrastructure and air space authorisation in China may (still) continue to be a bottleneck".
Expansion in China's economy, the world's second largest, is slowing. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in March announced a GDP growth target of “around 7.5 percent” for this year, below 2013's actual figure of 7.7 percent.
"GDP growth has often been a very close correlation to growth in air travel," said Mark Clarkson, business development director for Asia-Pacific for aviation intelligence, schedules and data provider OAG.