As the Spring Festival is approaching, a piece of news about "flying home to celebrate the New Year" has aroused heated discussion among netizens. Netizens said that there was no need to be stuck in traffic, no need to fight for tickets, and they could just fly home. The experience was simply great.
According to media reports, Mr. Xu, who has been running a farm in Wenzhou, Zhejiang for many years, chose to fly a helicopter home this year. Mr. Xu said that due to cost and reporting and approval issues, he first transported the helicopter from Zhejiang to his wife’s natal home in Xilin County, Baise, Guangxi, and then drove the helicopter back to his hometown more than 50 kilometers away. The original journey took more than two hours. It only takes 20 minutes by car or flight.
Mr. Xu said that his aircraft was a second-hand helicopter purchased at a cost of more than 2 million yuan in 2023. He obtained a pilot's license before flying and reported to the competent authorities in advance and applied for a route.
According to an insider in the civil aviation industry, "flying home to celebrate the New Year" is actually similar to driving home. As long as you have a pilot's license and apply for a flight route, there will be no big problems, and there will be almost no safety problems on the route. This industry insider admitted that the most important threshold is the high cost. Whether it is to obtain an aircraft driver's license or lease or purchase an aircraft, the cost is not low.
Most flight instructors fly home
Wang Lei, 35, is a flight instructor in Anhui. Flying has long been a part of his life and he spends several hours in the air every day.
From Lu'an, where he works, to his hometown of Bozhou, a distance of about 260 kilometers, it takes three and a half hours by car and only 50 minutes by plane. "There is a flying camp in front of my hometown, and you can land directly there."
Not only during the Spring Festival, he also often flies back to his hometown, and often takes his 7-year-old daughter with him.
Wang Lei said, "The aircraft I fly is a domestically produced aircraft. It has a 120-liter fuel tank. If it is filled with gasoline, it can travel 1,200 kilometers. The maximum flight altitude can reach 4,500 meters, and the flight speed is about 200 kilometers per hour."
Chengdu Commercial Daily-Red Star News reporters combed through social media and found that, except for Mr. Xu, most of the people who posted videos saying they were "flying home for the New Year" were flight training practitioners. On February 8, a flight training instructor in Hunan said in an interview with reporters that he would fly home soon.
Wang Lei said that for situations like flying home, you need to apply for a route with the competent authority about a week in advance. He told reporters that application for routes is more convenient and individuals can apply, but in most cases applications are made through general aviation companies. Generally speaking, there is a fixed application template. After filling in the information, you can apply to the relevant departments of military aviation and civil aviation, and the approval results will be available within a few days. Once the route is approved, you can take off normally.
"Flying a plane" is still a niche behavior
Nowadays, the popularity of "flying a plane" on the Internet has increased. Industry insiders told reporters that in recent years, the rate of individuals obtaining pilot licenses and piloting aircraft has increased, but this is still an extremely niche behavior.
The main business of Wang Lei's company is to provide pilot license application training. He told reporters that the number of people taking the license test will increase every year, but generally speaking, the number of people is not large and it is still relatively small. "(The number of people) is increasing every year. More than 20 students graduated under my name a year, and more than 50 students graduated in the entire company. In 2022, our entire company had only more than 20 students, and in 2023 it increased to 60 Multiple people.”
Wang Lei said that his company's customer base mainly includes two types of people. One is to fulfill their dream of flying. They have a certain financial foundation and want to get a pilot license. They can take their relatives, friends or their children to fly. , to satisfy their childhood dreams; the other type of people are mainly employment-oriented and want to do flight training jobs after obtaining a pilot license.
Wang Lei told reporters that learning a pilot license costs a lot of money. The fixed-wing sports pilot license costs 78,000 yuan. The training can be completed in about one and a half months. After completing the corresponding assessment, you can obtain the pilot license.
A staff member of an aviation school in Sichuan told reporters that individual learning for pilot licenses has been very popular in the past two years, with the number of students signing up growing at an annual rate of about 40%. He said that to obtain a fixed-wing sports aircraft pilot's license, you need to learn 30 hours of practical operation and 20 hours of theory, which will cost about 60,000 to 70,000 yuan. If you want to get a helicopter pilot's license, the price will almost double.
Chengdu Commercial Daily-Red Star News reporter Li Yida
Intern Li Xia