China Eastern Airlines Corp Ltd one of country's top three airlines, said it had agreed to buy 10 Airbus A320 series aircraft with engines from Airbus with catalogue price of 4.64 billion yuan (US $613 million).
The airline said in a statement late on Friday that it would fund the purchase by bank loans or other financial arrangements, and the aircraft are expected to be delivered from March 2011 to June 2012. It gave no further details.
In June, China Eastern said it had signed a contract to buy 30 A320 passenger jets from Airbus for less than the 13.9 billion yuan (US $1.74 billion) catalogue price of the planes.
In a separate statement, China Eastern said it expected to make a profit for the first half of 2007, compared with a net loss of 1.46 billion yuan the same period a year ago, thanks to an improvement in operating profit and exchange gains due to the appreciation of Chinese yuan.