On June 19, Alenia Aeronautica and Xi'an Aircraft Company (XAC) of China announced an agreement for the production of the Section 18 of the ATR aircraft - a rear section of the fuselage - in China. This deal was unveiled on the occasion of the Paris Air Show. The Xi'an Aircraft Company, which will supply the Section 18 to Alenia for the ATR aircraft, is part of AVIC I, the China Aviation Industry Corporation Consortium.

The manufacturing of the Section 18 in China will start in 2007 and reinforces the ties between ATR and the Chinese aeronautical industry, which started in 1985 with the supply, also by XAC, of the ATR 42 outer wing boxes. Since 1997, another part of the rear fuselage of the ATRs - the Section 16 - is also manufactured in China by XAC.

According to this new contract, sections 16 and 18 will be directly joined in Xi'an (China) before being assembled with the rest of the fuselage in Naples (Italy). Therefore, a significant part of the structure of the ATR aircraft (around 15 to 20%) will be directly manufactured in China. Over a four-year period from 2005 to 2009, the additional activity generated by this agreement, coupled with the dramatic increase in the production rate of the ATR aircraft will multiply by ten-fold the Chinese aeronautics industry labour volume dedicated to ATR production.

Since the beginning of the year, ATR has received orders for 53 new aircraft, some of them not yet unveiled. Since the beginning of the programme, ATR has sold 890 aircraft (416 ATR 42s and 474 ATR 72s) and has delivered 727 (393 ATR 42s and 334 ATR 72s), thus posting a current backlog of 163 aircraft.