Firm opens chopper tours over capital
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Global Times, June 30, 2011
Tourists can pay 1,500 yuan ($232) to sit in a helicopter and fly for 15 minutes above a Beijing airport next month, a general aviation company announced on Tuesday.
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A Beijinger takes pictures with Capital Helicopter's AS350B3 Squirrel Tuesday, when the company declared open its helicopter tours over its control zone in northwestern Beijing. |
Capital Helicopter, an affiliate of Hainan Airlines (HNA), has two AS350B3 Squirrel helicopters to patrol Badaling Airport's control zone in northwestern Beijing's Yanqing county.
A long-deserted general aviation facility, Badaling Airport was reopened on Tuesday.
The control zone has a five-kilometer radius and is under 1,000 meters high, an employee of the HNA Capital Helicopter surnamed He who refused to reveal his position in the company told the Global Times Wednesday.
According to He, every airport has a control zone over which the airport enjoys relatively more autonomy.
“We don't have to wait for approval for every single flight, but we must report the general flight schedule to the civil aviation administration and air force,” he said. The relatively free airspace has nothing to do with the low altitude airspace opening up for general aviation, he explained.
Within the five-kilometer radius passengers can see the Great Wall, Yeyahu Park, Kangxi Grassland and the Guanting Reservoir, according to the official microblog of the HNA Capital Helicopter Company.
In the promotion phase the chopper tour will cost 1,500 yuan a passenger. Six Web users have booked the tour on the group shopping website nuomi.com, a partner of the HNA Capital Helicopter, as of Wednesday evening. Badaling Airport will become the base of HNA Capital Helicopter Company, He said. Four other such general aviation airports are operating in Beijing, according to He, where companies manage general aviation flights in the control zones.
HNA Capital Helicopter will engage in other general aviation services such as executive helicopter services, according to the Xinhua News Agency Wednesday.
HNA Capital Helicopter plans to buy another 30 to 50 helicopters in the next three to five years, He told the Global Times.
“We will deploy them in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Beijing area,” He said.
“It means that we have a very strong expectation that low altitude airspace will be opened up for general aviation in the near future, but I cannot say when the airspace will be opened.”
In a joint proposal on August 19 last year, the State Council and the Central Military Commission laid out a plan that will see the low-altitude airspace for five cities including the capital opened for general aviation by 2015.
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