With the gradual opening of low-altitude airspace in China, general aviation has become an emerging industry in Longxing Industrial Park in Liangjiang New Area, Chongqing Municipality city.
In the General Aviation Group’s manufacturing shop, Douglas and his colleagues were pushing an assembled helicopter off the assembly line. He said, “we just assembled an Enstrom 480B helicopter which will a trial flight shortly.” Normally, it takes a month or even longer to assemble a helicopter.
Liu Hongbo, manager of the production line said that every screw spike on the helicopter was installed by the skilled technician manually in a bid to ensure flight safety of the aircraft. It’s expected to assembly 50 Enstrom helicopters and sells 40 of them globally in this year. Moreover, Liangjiang will strive to attract one and two well-known influential accessories enterprises and the park is expected to achieve an output of 7.6 billion yuan this year.
From the successful maiden flight of Chongqing-made helicopters, Liangjiang has received more than 60 domestic and international orders. Pilatus Aircraft Industries (China) Co., Ltd. in Liangjiang New Area successfully assembled the first aircraft fuselage on December 11, which marked a step forward of the general aviation manufacturing industry in Chongqing. The successfully assembled Pilatus PC-6 aircraft fuselage proved the expertise of the first batch technicians hired in Chongqing.
As inspected, the "Swiss quality, Made in China" production technology has reached Swiss standard. Pilatus Aircraft Chinese technician hiring kicked off in April 2014 and now 11 people have been hired. The Swiss side required technicians not only to acquire the relevant skills but also speak English. For the next step, Pilatus will continue to recruit staff in Chongqing based on the implement of the project, and gradually realize the localization of production.
The Aviation Industrial Park is a complete industrial chain, from flight training, to airplane production and maintenance parts production. It onl takes only 1,000 meters to go from the Aviation Flight University to helicopter sales hall so it’s not a dream to get a flight license to buy a helicopter back home.
Every screw spike on a helicopter is installed by the skilled technician manually in a bid to ensure flight safety of the aircraft. |
It’s expected to assembly 50 Enstrom helicopters and sells 40 of them globally in this year. |
John Edwards, the UK trade commissioner for China, praised Chongqing over its rise as a burgeoning center in intelligent manufacturing.