Businessman to buy private jet
(newsgd.com)
Updated: 2004-11-03 13:41

A Guangzhou businessman who is trying to buy a private jet from a U.S. company will probably become the first Guangzhou citizen to own a private aircraft.

The businessman plans to buy a Premier I from the Raytheon Company, the Southern Metropolitan News reported. The two parties were close to an agreement after two years of discussions, said the paper.

Although China still imposes strict limitations on the operation of private aircraft, experts predict that the number of private aircraft in China will increase by 2,000 each year in the next decade. Flying is expected to become a new trend for the country's nouveau riches.

The businessman plans to fly the aircraft to a branch of his company in Panzhihua City in Southeast Chinas' Sichuan Province.

The Premier I is capable of 835 kilometers per hour at an altitude of 12,000 meters. It can fly two and a half hours non-stop.

Price of the jet is about 50 million yuan with annual maintenance costs of about 3.6 million yuan. Operational costs could be lowered to about 1 million yuan if the jet was maintained by an airline, said Liao Xuefeng, Raytheon's marketing officer in North Asia.

To buy an aircraft, one has to obtain a pilot's license from the Civil Aviation Administration of China. Training for a pilot's license costs about 100,000 yuan. About 50 people in Guangdong have obtained licenses for private aircraft, according to the Guangdong Tongyong Aviation Club.

Private aircraft need to go through a complicated application process to fly across regions in China, as the government imposes strict limitations on air space above 600 meters.

The U.S. opened the air space below 3,000 meters to private aircraft in 1978.

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