Aviation industry in China

In November 2012 as a result of the rapidly expanding civil aviation there were 182 commercial airports in China. Under the 2011-2015 national plan, 82 new commercial airports are to be constructed.

Around 500 airports of all types and sizes were in operation in 2007, about 400 of which had paved runways and about 100 of which had runways of 3,047 m or shorter. There also were 35 heliports in 2007, an increasingly used type of facility. With the additional airports came a proliferation of airlines.

China has the fastest growing passenger air market of any country in the world (by total passenger numbers) and between 2009 and 2014 the number of passengers increased over 47% from 266,293,020 to 390,878,784. In 2014 China was second only to the United States in total numbers of passengers carried.

In 1939 at Tsing Hua University a cadre of students constructed a wind tunnel with the help of Frank Wattendorf, a graduate of Harvard, MIT and Caltech. It was assigned to Tsing Hua Aeronautical Research Institute under the direction of Y. H. Ku.

Before the Chinese Civil War, there were Republic of China joint ventures with Pan American World Airways and Lufthansa. In 1946 Civil Air Transport (Air America) was founded by General Claire L. Chennault and Whiting Willauer for the relief of RoC. As a result of the Chinese Civil War, the Communist Party of China took control of mainland China, and only Civil Air Transport moved along with the Kuomintang (KMT)-controlled RoC government to Taiwan.

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