The South Korean Government has slashed this year's allocation of funding for the Korea Commercial aircraft Development Consortium (KCDC) because of the country's economic difficulties and the absence of any concrete progress in breaking into the civil aviation market.
South Korea's new Government has cut KCDC's budget to just one billion won ($723,000), a fraction of the 18 billion won industry had been asking for. Local aerospace officials point out, however, that the consortium still had some 30 billion won in accumulated funds in the bank and can request supplemental financing once it has a programme in place.
Despite setbacks, including the scrapping of the planned Aero International (Regional) Airjet 70, the Samsung-led consortium continues to pursue possible collaboration with foreign partners.
After initial contacts with Embraer in February, KCDC is to hold more detailed follow-up discussions on participating in the proposed Embraer ERJ-170 70-seat regional jet as a risk sharing partner. South Korean officials, however, recognise that local final assembly of an aircraft is unrealistic.
South Korea has also bid to supply Fairchild Dornier with components for the proposed 728Jet regional aircraft. A third option is to join Israel Aircraft Industries on the possible Airtruck freighter development for FedEx.
Source: Flight International
