Three China-made MA60 passenger planes will enter the domestic aviation market from April, the plane's producer - the Xi'an Aircraft Company - announced on Saturday.

Wuhan Airline Company will lease three MA60 planes from Xi'an Aircraft Company through Shenzhen Financial Leasing Co Ltd. The planes will be delivered in April, May and June respectively.

It is the first time the smaller passenger plane gets the chance to play in the domestic market since it was developed in 2000.

Gao Dacheng, manager of the aircraft company, said his firm had signed a 60-plane sales package with Shenzhen Financial Leasing Company in 2000, which would lease MA60 planes to domestic air carriers.

The MA60 is a 60-seat airscrew-driven aeroplane. It can cover the distance of 1,600 kilometres with a full load. Its maximum speed is 504 kilometres per hour.

Gao said he is confident the plane's performance will convince more domestic airlines to become customers.

"With international safety standard and comfortability, our plane saves on operation costs for our customers," Gao said.

Figures with the aircraft company showed MA60 planes could save up to one-third of operation costs when compared with other similar same-scale foreign aircraft.

Further more, the MA60 passenger planes are cheaper than foreign products, Gao said, but refused to say how much a plane costs.

Cheng Yaokun, president of Wuhan Airlines, agreed with Gao, saying MA60 can save on operation costs.

Cheng also expressed his support of China's plane-manufacturing industry as a whole.

"We want to call our colleagues in the aviation industry to support China-made planes in practice, not only in lip service," Cheng said.

His airline has seven Yun-7 planes - MA60's predecessors - in operation at present, and the new MA60 will replace the Yun-7 in the following few years, operating along some short regional air routes.

All three parties involved in the leasing deal refused to disclose how much money they would receive or pay.

"It's a win-win deal for all of us and China's aircraft manufacturing industry," said Rong Longzhang, president of the Shenzhen Financial Leasing Company.

He said China's Go-West policy had stimulated many airlines in western regions to develop regional air routes but the bottleneck is the lack of money.

"Through our co-operation with Xi'an Aircraft Company, we will help these airlines get advanced aircraft with less investment," Rong said.

He said some airlines are also in talks with them about leasing MA60 aircraft but refused to name them.

(China Daily March 18, 2002)