Dogfight looms over jets

China will become the global battlefield for wide-body aircraft in the next decade as the country's busy airports and expanding air traffic fuel demand for more of these jets on domestic routes.

The fast-growing domestic civil aviation market is forcing Chinese airlines to use wide-body aircraft to carry more passengers on high-traffic routes between Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Aimed at meeting this demand, Airbus SAS announced the A330 regional project at the Beijing Air Show in September with a new, lower-weight variant of its wide-body product - the A330-300.