Asiana Airlines is adding more staff to the unit aimed at providing data and information to regulators as it seeks to close its long-planned merger with Korean Air. The Star Alliance carrier says in a statement that it has increased the unit to 42 employees, led by acting chief executive Won Yoo-seok. It adds that the strengthening of the team comes as overseas regulators are seeking more complex data and information from the airline as they weigh up whether to approve the union of South Korea’s two largest airlines. The UK recently approved the takeover by Korean Air of Asiana after it agreed to cooperate with Virgin Atlantic on its services between London Heathrow and Seoul Incheon. Korean Air still requires regulatory sign-off from competition authorities in the USA and Japan, while earlier this year the European Commission has opted to open an in-depth investigation due to concerns that the combined carrier would have too much power in both the passenger and cargo markets between Europe and South Korea. The SkyTeam carrier has stated that it would like to complete the merger this year. Korean Air announced plans to take over Asiana in November 2020 as the smaller carrier battled close to two years of uncertainty, compounded by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Prior to that, Asiana’s troubled main shareholder, Kumho Industrial, had selected Hyundai Development as the preferred buyer of its 33% stake in the airline in 2019, as part of a wider restructuring by the conglomerate. Those talks broke down in mid-2020 before the deal with Korean Air surfaced.

Chinese carrier Juneyao Air has taken delivery of the first Airbus A321neo completed at the airframer's single-aisle final assembly line (FAL) in Tianjin. Parts for the aircraft were commissioned at the site in November 2022, says Airbus. It adds that the Pratt & Whitney PW1100G-powered twinjet is equipped with 199 economy and eight business seats. Airbus has adapted its Tianjin facility for A321 assembly and reconfigured its former A380 FAL in Toulouse for single-aisle production, gaining ability to produce the A320 family's largest model across all four FALs. The first A321 to be delivered from Toulouse is currently being assembled in the new production line. A321s were previously produced only at Airbus's FALs in German city Hamburg and Mobile in the USA. The new production set-up will create, the company says, "flexibility and agility to meet Airbus's ramp-up objectives and the rising market success of the A321 model". The variant has replaced the baseline A320 as the family's most successful model, now representing more than 60% of the series' order backlog. In Tianjin, final-assembly activities and tests for the site's first A321neo went smoothly, says Airbus China chief executive George Xu. "The successful delivery of the first A321 aircraft enables Airbus to honour the popularity of the aircraft for the China market and beyond," he states, adding: "Airbus continues to expand and enhance its comprehensive co-operation with China's aviation industry, underlining its long-term commitment to China to ensure customer proximity while supporting the global commercial aircraft production ramp-up." Airbus has delivered more than 600 A320/A319s from Tianjin since 2009. The site was established as a joint venture between the European airframer and a consortium of Tianjin Free Trade Zone and Chinese aircraft maker AVIC.
In 2017, an A330 completion and delivery centre was added to the Tianjin site.

Brussels Airlines will add two Airbus A320s to its fleet and wet-lease two Bombardier-built CRJ900s from Irish carrier CityJet for the summer 2023 season. The A320s will join Brussels Airlines' fleet permanently and be deployed across its entire medium-haul network, with a focus on new leisure destinations such as Djerba and Monastir in Tunisia, the Lufthansa Group subsidiary says. Under a wet-lease agreement signed in January, the two CityJet CRJ900s will operate for Brussels Airlines from 26 March until 28 October. The regional jets will be deployed for daily flights from Brussels airport to European cities, including Bordeaux and Lyon in France, Milan in Italy, Swiss city Geneva , Austrian capital Vienna, and Copenhagen and Billund in Denmark. The expanded fleet will enable the airline to increase its European operations by 10% this summer, it says. "Our fleet now grows to 36 medium-haul and nine long-haul aircraft," the carrier's head of network strategy and planning Jan Derycke states. "With this fleet and network expansion, Brussels Airlines is achieving its targeted growth three years ahead of schedule."