The European aircraft manufacturer Airbus Industrie is in talks with China for the sale of between 30 and 50 A320 airliners, worth up to US$2.7 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper quoted Airbus commercial director John Leahy as saying that discussions on the single-aisle aircraft could be concluded before the end of the year.

Depending on the models and quantities concerned, the contract represents a catalogue price of between US$1.5 and US$2.7 billion.

Xu Denying, director of the state-owned China Aviation Supplies Import and Export, told the daily that Beijing was also close to finalising a deal for its first Russian passenger planes in almost a decade.

(Eastday.com.cn 08/22/2001)