China Aviation Supplies has committed to 42 Airbus A320-family narrowbodies and 18 A330 twinjets under a general-terms agreement.

Airbus signed the deal with CAS during a visit by French president François Hollande to Beijing.

At 31 March, there were some 750 A320-family aircraft in operation with 14 Chinese airlines and more than 110 A330s in operation with six of the nation's operators, says Airbus.

Flightglobal's Ascend Online database shows that at 24 April, customers in mainland China accounted for 257 firm aircraft in the Airbus backlog: 16 A319s, 144 A320s, 66 A321s, 21 A330s and 10 A350-900s.

Source: Air Transport Intelligence news