I didn’t expect to write back-to-back blogs on the same subject, but more news keeps trumpeting China’s aviation ambitions that it’s hard to set it aside even for a week.
This week, Li Jiaxiang, chief of the Civil Aviation Administration of China told delegates attending an IATA meeting in Beijing the country plans to build 70 airports in three years as well as expand 100 existing airports. Chinese carriers would operate around 4,700 planes by 2015 – this on the heels of IATA figures that announced wafer-thin profit margins for airlines this year.
China brings two advantages to its rather late-start to build an industry that took much of the rest the world the past century to develop. One, its commercial airline fleet consists of new, fuel-efficient planes. Two, the Chinese are skipping over old-fashioned radar and heading straight to “NextGen” GPS navigation systems as they open up vast expanses of passenger air routes.
The country’s choice of its next leap forward into the aviation industry is more than symbolic. But it is hard to beat if China were to become a major force in what most of us would consider to be an “apex” industry that signifies a whole lot of modern sophistication.
The country’s ambitions, however, apparently go much higher than 32,000 feet. Later this month, China will launch a manned spacecraft to dock with its orbiting space lab. Only the United States and Russia can say they’ve done that. And I wonder, how long it will be before the Chinese break this American monopoly? Of course, like any Icarus tale, there’s this story also from last week that brings the story very much back to the safety of earth.
