China: Airbus on Wednesday delivered the first aircraft assembled at its new Final Assembly Line (FAL) for A320 Family aircraft in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin, the second of its kind in both China and Asia.
The delivery represents a major milestone in Airbus' expansion of its industrial footprint in China and across its global industrial system, the company said.
China Eastern Airlines took delivery of the A320neo aircraft. The Shanghai-based carrier took delivery of China's first Airbus aircraft, an A310, in 1985.
China, the country with the world's largest air-travel population, handled nearly 1.53 billion passenger trips at its civil aviation airports in 2025, up 4.8 per cent year on year, data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China revealed.
The second FAL in China, which was put into operation last October, is a critical facilitator for the company's global A320 Family ramp-up trajectory towards a production rate of 75 A320 aircraft per month and provides the necessary flexibility and capacity to meet strong market demand.
Since the inauguration of the first FAL in Tianjin in 2008, Airbus' first commercial aircraft assembly line outside Europe, the facility has assembled and delivered more than 800 A320 Family aircraft. Chinese airlines now operate more than 2,300 Airbus aircraft, with about one-third assembled and delivered in Tianjin.