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Owning a Private Plane Is No Longer A Dream For Chinese
While most Chinese high-income earners are setting aside money for private cars, Li Anli, a former Air China stewardess, has ordered a private plane costing over 500,000 U.S. dollars.
As the first Chinese woman to buy her own plane, Li said this will realize a long-cherished dream of piloting a plane of her own. She has ordered a Bonanza A36 luxury plane from the U.S.-based Raytheon Aircraft, which sells some 100 such planes a year. The company will deliver the aircraft to Shanghai in August.
Raytheon said the company has given Li a discount as an encouragement to the first Chinese buyer of the Bonanza model, whose market price is some 600,000 US dollars.
Li now runs a private trade company in Shanghai. She believes that more wealthy Chinese will own their own planes as China is opening the blue sky to private planes.
Li's plane will be put under supervision of China Eastern Airlines, said Zhang Feng, general manager of the Shanghai Eastern Aviation Educational Training Co. Ltd. The company began in April as the first corporate training center for private pilots in China.
The company also acts as an agent submitting flight applications for private pilots to airports. "Because unlike driving cars, piloting a plane needs ground navigational backup," said Zhang.
Zhang Yue, general manager of the Yuanda Group, a giant air- conditioner producer in China, was the first private plane owner in China. He now owns four planes, one jet aircraft from Cessna and three Bell helicopters. With these airplanes, his work has become more efficient.
"I can fly to any place I want," said Zhang, "I only have to inform the aviation authorities of my flight route three hours prior to take off."
Zhang got his private pilot license from the Xinjin Branch of the China Civil Aviation College in the city of Guanghan in southwest China's Sichuan Province. As China's only school for professional pilots, the college began to train paying students like Zhang in 1996.
The flight courses cost about 60,000 yuan (7,229 U.S. dollars), and included 45 days of classes and about 40 hours of flight time. Qualified students receive licenses authorized by the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China, said Tan Dongchun, dean of the college in Xinjin.
So far, 43 people have got private pilot licenses. Despite the expensive tuition cost, the number of people who want to learn to fly is on the rise, said Tan, adding that not all of the students are rich business people, entrepreneurs, or employees of foreign-funded enterprises.
Bai Zihong, who had worked in a grain depot in Beijing, enrolled in the Xinjin flight school with money borrowed from relatives. After graduation, the 42-year-old man became a pilot for a collectively-owned airline company in Beijing.
Liao Xuefeng, a sales representative for Raytheon, believes that China is one of the largest potential markets for private planes.
He said that many of China's business elite are in the 30 to 40-year-old age bracket. "They are rich and willing to keep up with the latest international trends and fashions."
Domestic aircraft companies have taken note of this cultural phenomenon. The Nanjing Aeronautical Institute in east China's Jiangsu Province has designed a two-seat plane which will be put into production very soon.
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