Airbus delivered an A350 to China Eastern Airlines, which will become the 10th A350 of China Eastern Airlines' fleet. What's more, it will be the first aircraft delivered by Airbus after the completion of its wide-body aircraft in Tianjin and the commissioning of its delivery center.

Airbus's wide-body aircraft completion and delivery center in Tianjin was opened in September 2017, which is the only delivery center outside Europe that can deliver single-aisle passenger aircraft and wide-body aircraft at the same time. In November 2019, Airbus, AVIC and Tianjin Free Trade Zone signed a framework agreement to further expand the wide-body machine completion and delivery center project to A350 models.

China Eastern Airlines is pleased to mention the tenth A350 passenger plane-B-323h, which was transferred from Tianjin to Pudong this afternoon after delivery.

Airbus attaches great importance to the completion of the delivery center in Tianjin, which is inseparable from the huge market demand of domestic aviation. According to Airbus, at present, Airbus aircraft in service in China account for 52.5% of the market share of passenger planes and cargo planes above 100 seats, and this number is still rising. Despite the epidemic, Airbus delivered 64 new aircraft to the China market in the first half of this year. Under such a huge customer demand, the delivery center will play a greater role. Many customers can see the installation process of work packages such as seats and interiors more conveniently and intuitively, and put forward personalized requirements to adjust them in time. However, if they want to realize this process, they need to go to Europe. It's like you bought a car factory and opened a 4S shop directly in front of your house to facilitate you to customize the interior and paint. In addition, under the current new normal background, "delivery at home" is also conducive to reducing epidemic prevention turnover, which is more efficient and safer.

The panorama of Airbus Tianjin Park, in which the wide-body aircraft completion and delivery center mainly includes a cabin completion workshop for cabin installation and decoration and a painting workshop.

At present, Airbus Tianjin Wide-body Machine Completion and Delivery Center has been able to realize the whole process of seat installation, aircraft painting, flight test, customer acceptance and aircraft delivery under the joint certification of EASA and CAAC, while the A350 of another Air China aircraft parked in the hangar now will realize the local installation of more work packages (such as seats, ceilings, toilets, etc.). That is to say, the final assembly of the aircraft is only completed in Europe, but the green leather aircraft without cabin facilities and painting will fly directly from Toulouse to Tianjin, and then the installation of various equipment in the cabin will be completed in Tianjin. After the installed equipment passes the test, the green plane will be transferred to the painting workshop for painting. After the painting is completed, the aircraft will be handed over to the current Airbus Tianjin Aircraft Delivery Center for flight test and finally delivered to the customer.

The A350, which will be delivered to Air China, is currently being installed in the cabin. After the installation, the painting work will be completed in Tianjin. It is understood that the whole painting process will take about 19 days.

The above processes were originally completed in Europe, but now they can be completed in Tianjin's completion and delivery center, which greatly facilitates the domestic airlines to "buy in buy buy"

Mr. Xu Gang, Airbus Global Executive Vice President and CEO of Airbus China, also revealed that China's aviation market is steadily recovering. In the post-epidemic era, airlines need more efficient and environmentally-friendly new models such as A321neo, and Airbus is actively discussing with Chinese partners the areas of further expanding cooperation with China (you can understand the meaning by yourself).