Aviation International News senior correspondent Ian Goold has been involved in aerospace since 1964 and in aviation media for more than 40 years. He enjoyed a 20-year career at Flight International magazine, where he was latterly air-transport editor before turning freelance in 1993. A winner of the European Regions Airline Association Hank McGonagle award for excellence in aerospace journalism and a Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year global&nbsp;award, he has edited or contributed to aerospace and aviation magazines, special publications, and websites in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Ian entered aerospace as an apprentice at the British Aircraft Corporation at Brooklands (Weybridge), where he worked on production and final assembly lines of the Vickers Super VC10, and BAC One-Eleven , and manufacture of Concorde major sub-assemblies. He subsequently graduated from the BAC Design Training School to work in the airframe structures drawing office (including design of international future projects, such as the Panavia Tornado multi-role combat aircraft) before joining Flight International in 1973. Apart from years of reading aircraft magazines and books, his first direct contact with aviation media had come during the early 1970s when he was involved at Brooklands with the Weybridge Man-powered Aircraft Group, which designed and built the tenth aircraft to fly under purely human power. As an aviation journalist, he has worked at more than&nbsp; 50 of the major biennial&nbsp;global and regional international aerospace industry shows at Le Bourget, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai (having missed attending only one "Farnborough" since 1960), plus innumerable NBAA, HAI, (U.S.) AOPA, and EBACE Conventions and ERA Assemblies. His favourite aircraft is the Hawker Hunter, of which – as a schoolboy – he heard hundreds make their first flights from Dunsfold, where also on September 24, 2013, he saw the penultimate landing of the VC10 (happily involving an example of which he had witnessed the maiden takeoff in 1970) a day before the last example made the design's final flight (unless, of course....).

Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

Following two years of record orders for new jetliners, a principal consideration for the manufacturers is how best to manage assembly and provision of supplies to match the higher rates of aircraft delivery. One way European manufacturer Airbus is addressing this challenge is by establishing a final-assembly line for the A320 series of single-aisle jetliners in China.
Construction is already under way in Tianjin to provide hangars, offices, a delivery center and related services. The line is being set up under an agreement between Airbus and a Chinese consortium whose membership includes both elements of the Chinese Aviation Industry Corp., AVIC I and II. 
Examples of A318, A319, A320 and A321 models will be assembled and delivered in China to the same standard as aircraft built in an identical facility in Germany. Final assembly operations are expected to begin in Tianjin in August next year, with the first completed aircraft delivered to a customer before July 2009. By 2011, Chinese production is expected to have reached some four units a month. 
Tianjin output will contribute to total A320 series production by the end of 2009 of 40 units per month, 25 percent higher than current rates, which already represent a record for the aerospace industry. Airbus has increased manufacturing output as its order backlog has risen to more than 2,500 aircraft. In addition, Airbus has been turning out seven A330/A340 family models each month, a rate that also will be raised&nbsp; to nine by the end of 2009.

Airbus to open A320 assembly line in China

Following two years of record orders for new jetliners, a principal consideration for the manufacturers is how best to manage assembly and provision of sup

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