A
irshow China 2014 in Zhuhai
last November was a snapshot
of the history of general aviation
development in the world ’s most vast
country. While Cessna reported
increased interest in its Caravan
utility aircraft (and exhibited four
new locally made examples) and
US company Netjets announced
itself the first business jet fractional
ownership operator to enter
the Chinese market, helicopter
manufacturer Sikorsky celebrated
30 years in country.
Although 2014 figures were
not yet available at press time,
the last Airshow China in 2012 is
said to have attracted more than
330,000 visitors, 108,000 of them
trade visitors perusing the wares
of 650 exhibitors. By comparison,
Singapore Airshow organisers quote
146,000 visitors and just over 1000
exhibitors for their 2014 event. The
Zhuhai show has been running
biannually since 1996.A new dawn
General aviation is not new to China.
The nation had its early pioneers,
including Feng Ru, who emigrated to
the United States and returned home
with a biplane of his own design in1911, demonstrating it until killed
in an air display in 1912. Modern
general aviation began in 1951,
with government-contracted Curtis
C-46 Commando aircraft spraying
pesticide. A government sponsored
flying school that opened in 1956
is still operating today, with a fleet
of more than 100 Cessna 172s and
Piper Seminoles.
But the last decade has seen a
strong focus on general aviation,
to the point where it is named
in China’s 12th Five Year Plan,
adopted in 2011, as a strategic
industry to be nurtured.
Since then the nation has begun
to liberalise its airspace, formerly
tightly controlled by the military,
and build the regulatory regimes and
training infrastructure needed to
make general aviation an enabler for
industry and the economy. And it has
also invested in or bought outright
some of the world ’s general aviation
technologies such as Continental
Engines and aircraft manufacturers
Cirrus, Epic and Mooney (a nd a
failed bid to buy Beechcraft) as a
short cut to learning what it takes to
create an indigenous industry.
The road has sometimes been
bumpy – commercial helicopter
operators servicing offshore oil andgas rigs have told of being informed
they were simply not allowed to
fly for the next few days because of
military exercises. And private pilots
have reported waiting three days for
avgas (which pundits suggest is one
reason Mooney’s new trainers, shown
at Zhuhai, are diesel powered).
From a total of less than 50,000
general aviation hours flown in 1991,
China has grown to fly 591,000 in
2013, with 1519 aircraft operated by
189 companies, according to the Civil
Aviation Administration of China
(CAAC). Nearly a quarter of that
number are trainer aircraft, as China
ramps up to feed an increasingly
mobile population’s need for airlines
(CAAC figures suggest 70% of the
flying hours total were devoted to
training). A quarter are helicopters,
mostly serving natural resource
contracts in the country’s north east
and about 200 are business jets.An expert view
According to Ed Smith, Senior
Vice President of International
and Environmental Affairs for
the US based Genera l Aviation
Manufacturers Association
(GAMA), the devastating 2008
Sichuan earthquake, which killednearly 70,000 people in one of
China’s central provinces, opened
the nation’s eyes to the value of
general aviation.
“It kind of pointed out to
them that they didn’t have the
airlift capability that robust GA
infrastructure would have given
them,” Smith said. “They didn’t have
the ability to get in there quickly and
provide relief and evacuation and
medical support and so on.”
He believes the Chinese aviation
market will continue to grow as the
country liberalises its airspace, with
flight training the spearhead as a
support to the ever-increasing need
for airline pilots and engineers. The
industry’s development has been
a stark contrast to that of GA in
western nations.
“It hasn’t developed the way it
did in Australia or the way it did
in the US and probably most other
countries,” Smith said. “The light
end of GA has been, is, almost
entirely dominated by training,
exclusively because there’s so little
airspace that you can fly in. There’s
also been a fairly rapid development,
although from an extremely low
base of practically zero to the point
that there are now over 200 business
jets based in China and many moreaustralianflying.com.au 33
January - February 2015 AUSTRALIAN FLYINGMAIN IMAGE: Chinese aviation’s
new dawn became apparent when
China Aviation Industry General
Aircraft Co. Ltd (CAIGA) bought-
out high-tech US company Cirrus
Aircraft and its SR range.
L E F T: The King Air was very close to
being a Chinese product thanks to a
failed take-over bid of Beechcraft by
Superior Aviation.AIRSHOW CHINA 2014