Airbus Delivers First Aircraft from Second China Assembly Line

Airbus's second Tianjin line matters less as a delivery milestone than as evidence of how deeply the planemaker has localized narrowbody production in its largest single-country market. For China Eastern and other domestic carriers, incremental A320neo capacity out of Tianjin can support fleet renewal without depending solely on imports. The open question is whether this second line scales toward its stated capacity or remains a political hedge against trade friction, and whether Boeing's eventual China footprint rebalances the duopoly's local manufacturing.