Did you know China is planning to build 45 new airports in the next five years? Granted, some of this capacity is probably going to be excessive or at least misplaced. Chinese provincial governments have form when it comes to building white-elephant prestige projects, and airports are among them.
But there's no doubt that in aviation, the world centre of gravity is moving east. Yesterday evening, Etihad Airways CEO James Hogan delivered the inaugural Lowy Institute Australia-Gulf Lecture on 'The Shifting Geo-politics of Aviation'. We'll have a complete recording soon, but here firstly is a short interview I conducted with James right after the speech, which goes through some of the major themes he touched on.
