Airbus took a significant step forward in its transfer of aircraft manufacturing technology to China. On Mar. 31st, the first delivery ceremony of fixed trailing edges for Airbus' A320 wings was held at Xi'an Aircraft Industry (Group) Co., Ltd. China is the first country outside of Europe that Airbus has cooperated with on its wing section program.

In 1999, Airbus signed an agreement with China Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC I), under which Airbus would transfer manufacturing technologies and production lines used in the making of A320 wings components, with the objective of enabling China to manufacture whole wings.

At yesterday ceremony, Tom Williams, Airbus's executive vice president of procurement, said that the proportion of difficulty in manufacturing and assembling A320 wing technology to that of the overall technology of manufacturing a full aircraft is from 1/3 to 1/2.

At present, over 3600 Airbus aircrafts serve over 200 airlines around the world. Over half of these aircraft use parts manufactured in China.

(Chinanews April 1, 2005)