A shiny black body, a front window with a beautiful curve design and silvery propellers. Li Linhai, 47 years old, couldn't keep himself from smiling when he saw the 11-meter-long helicopter.

"To me, aircraft represent a sort of dream, just like that for a bicycle owner to have a car," said Li, looking at his 4 million yuan (493,218 US dollars) Robinson R44 affectionately.

A private business proprietor from Shanghai, Li Linhai drives a not-so-luxurious imported car, dislikes golf, sauna baths and karaoke. "Actually, I'm a thrifty man," he emphasized.

In June 2003, Li went to south China's Guangdong Province to learn how to drive a helicopter and got a license. Five months later, he had his Robinson shipped to Shanghai.

In June this year, Li piloted the Robinson from Longhua Airport of Shanghai to the Tianmu Lake in Liyang of the neighboring Jiangsu Province. The flight lasted one hour, much longer than Li's first flight on his helicopter a year and a half ago, when he only drove the aircraft to hover over Fengxian District of Shanghai.

Though Li Linhai serves as the manager of China's first private flight club, Qianyan (Frontier), which was established in Shanghai in mid August, he would like to keep a low profile, because of the limited registration of privately owned aircraft in China.

Guo Youhu, deputy head of CAAC East China branch, disclosed at the opening ceremony of the Qianyan Private Flight Club that there were only 70 privately-owned airplanes on the Chinese mainland, as against 200,000 in the United States.

But some industry insiders queried the figure. They thought that strictly speaking, private planes were just like private cars, referring to aircraft driven by its owner himself/herself. By this standard, there are now only 10 private planes on the mainland.

"Private aircraft are still taken as a luxury goods in China, and piloting a private plane, a game for millionaires," Li Linhai said.

Beset with complicated and time-consuming approval procedures, private aviation is also restricted by limited supply of fuel, the absence of maintenance services and a low-altitude air domain yet to be open to private flight. Most private aircraft in China, including Li Linhai's Robinson, are driven by specialty aviation gasoline that is only produced in Lanzhou, capital city of northwest China's Gansu Province.

Another Mr. Li from the private flight club said, "Currently, it is hardly possible for Linhai's helicopter to fly from Shanghai to Beijing." The flight needs three oil charges and complex approval procedures, he added. Linhai's flight from Shanghai to the Tianmu Lake in Jiangsu lasted only one hour, but it had taken one week for Linhai to receive the go-ahead signal from aviation regulators.

China once rigidly prohibited the granting of airplane licenses to individuals but its polices toward private aircraft ownership were shifted after its new Regulation on Flight Control of General Aviation took effect on May 1, 2003.

Under the rules, CAAC opened its airspace, which was once tightly controlled by the government and the military, to private aircraft owners. According to CAAC East China branch, there are 300 or so individuals holding licenses for private aircraft, excluding would-be professional pilots. Industry insiders revealed that the aviation sector is striving for an earlier opening of low-altitude air domain. The air domain below 600 meters will most likely be opened first, they estimated.

Jin Jian, president of the Qiangyan Holding Ltd., which is the parent company of the private flight club, considered, "in two to three years, more and more Chinese people will become private aircraft owners, as the low-altitude air domain will probably be opened. "

Source: Xinhua