Aviation sector cleared for takeoff

Business airplanes on show at the 2012 Asian Business Aviation Conference & Exhibition in Shanghai in March. Yong Kai / for China Daily

General aviation is not new to China, but it is one of the few sectors that have not experienced strong growth over the past 30 years, hemmed in by stringent airspace rules that have given priority to military, and now increasingly commercial, flights.

For every takeoff, private aircraft owners have to go through a laborious process to obtain approval from the aviation authority. That has given rise to so-called black flying - taking to the air without approval - which has become more prevalent as rich Chinese splurge on their own aircraft.

Gao Yuanyang, director of the general aviation industry research center at the School of Economics and Management at Beihang University in Beijing, said that generally when a region's GDP per capita exceeds $4,000 it is ready for a general aviation industry.

"If its GDP per capita exceeds $10,000 a year it is ready for the development of business jets."

Gao said China is more than ready for general aviation because its GDP per capita exceeded $4,000 a year in 2010, and per capita GDP in the well-developed Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas has surpassed $10,000 a year.

"You need only compare the industry in China with that of the United States to see the potential," he said.

In the US there were 230,000 aircraft last year, and the industry took in $150 billion and employed 1.2 million people. In China there were fewer than 1,200 registered aircraft, relatively few jobs and turnover estimated to be a fraction of that in the US.

"China's population is four times that of the US, and geographically China is as big, so the potential is obvious," Gao said.

Since China's reform and opening-up policy was launched in the late 1970s, nearly all the sectors that could turn into strong industries on a par with the potential that the general aviation industry has shown have done so, he said; general aviation has not.

Christopher Jackson, a consultant in general aviation and director of project development for Genesis Investment of Shanghai, the sales representative in China for Cessna Aircraft, agrees, saying that general aviation accounts for 1.5 percent of US GDP.

"General aviation in China accounts for around 0.0015 percent of GDP," said Jackson, who has been following general aviation in China for 12 years.

"As the country tries to change its economy, drives its domestic consumption and creates jobs, the government sees general aviation as a major driving force to achieve that goal."

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