China Eastern Airlines signed a purchase agreement with Airbus on Friday for 25 A330neo widebody jets at a catalogue price of $9.35 billion, as the Shanghai-based carrier looks to add intercontinental routes.
The Shanghai-based carrier plans to deploy the jets from Pudong Airport to expand intercontinental routes starting in 2029
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China Eastern Airlines signed a purchase agreement with Airbus on Friday for 25 A330neo widebody jets at a catalogue price of $9.35 billion, as the Shanghai-based carrier looks to add intercontinental routes.
According to a filing China Eastern submitted to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, deliveries will be staggered across a four-year window running from 2029 through 2033. The $9.35 billion valuation reflects Airbus's January 2025 catalogue prices, China Eastern noted, and the sum the carrier will actually pay is expected to come in below that figure — on terms that beat the discounts China Eastern has received in past deals with Airbus. Airlines routinely negotiate significant reductions when committing to large-scale purchases.
Operating out of Shanghai Pudong Airport, the incoming widebodies are intended to open up new long-haul destinations and add capacity on existing ones, reinforcing Pudong's position as a major connecting gateway for intercontinental travel. At least 10 aging A330s in China Eastern's current fleet are anticipated to be phased out over the same years the new jets arrive, so a portion of the order will effectively refresh rather than expand the airline's widebody capacity.
Powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 engines, the A330neo brings higher-aspect-ratio wings and aerodynamic refinements to the classic A330 platform, yielding meaningful improvements in fuel efficiency over the earlier model. China Eastern said it intends to draw on a combination of internal funds, debt financing, and capital markets instruments to cover the cost, and that spreading payments across the delivery schedule should not meaningfully strain its liquidity or day-to-day operations.
The widebody order follows a narrowbody transaction China Eastern concluded with Airbus back in March, when the carrier committed to buying 101 A320neo jets at a catalogue value of roughly $15.8 billion.
Chinese carriers and leasing firms have handed Airbus a total of roughly 200 orders so far this year, on top of approximately 150 placed across 2025, cementing the planemaker's standing as China's dominant aircraft supplier — a role backed by a fleet of nearly 2,400 Airbus jets already flying in the country and a Tianjin assembly line that produces single-aisle models locally, Bloomberg reported. Boeing $BA, by contrast, has found it difficult to match Airbus's foothold in China, hampered by the reputational damage from the 737 Max accidents and the broader friction in US-China relations.
Over the coming twenty years, Reuters reported, Airbus is projecting Chinese air travel demand will expand at an average pace of about 5% per year.
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