China plans to buy 218 aircraft this year -official

BEIJING, March 8 (Reuters) - China plans this year to buy 218 aircraft, including jumbo jets and regional planes, to meet surging demand, the head of the country's civil aviation agency said.

There were 230 million air passenger trips last yearm and the number is expected to more than triple to 700 million by 2020, Li Jiaxiang, director of the Civial Aviation Administration of China, was cited as saying by the official Xinhua news agency. (Reporting by Simon Rabinovitch; editing by Ken Wills)