China's ICBC Leasing plans to support the Comac 919 programme as part of the country's intention of promoting the narrowbody aircraft programme, which is being touted as an alternative to existing Airbus and Boeing narrowbodies.
The company, which is part of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world's largest bank in terms of market value, says that part of its mandate is to help indigenous passenger aircraft programmes such as the 919 and ARJ21 regional jet.
"The 919 and ARJ21 are very important for China. We have to support it in terms of helping airlines in other countries to lease the aircraft. We are doing that with the ARJ21 and we will do that with the 919 when it comes out as well," says Johnny Lau, managing director of aviation finance at ICBC Leasing.
ICBC has 22 aircraft in its portfolio, but it aims to increase that to at least 100 over the next two years. Lau, speaking at the Inside Air Finance conference at Asian Aerospace, said that his company is looking for more aircraft to manage.
"We want to be much bigger than we are now. We have the strong backing from our parent, and our capital was recently increased to 5 billion yuan [$732 million] from 2 billion yuan. We are looking for even more assets, so anyone who has some can contact us."
Comac plans to have the 919's first flight in late 2014 and has brought the delivery date forward to 2016, with Chinese industry sources saying that this was to get the aircraft into the market before Airbus and Boeing develop a successor to their aircraft.
Source: Flight Daily News
