Among the people who went home for the Spring Festival, some people chose an ingenious way, including a 35-year-old father with a 7-year-old daughter who drove a domestic plane home for the New Year.
The following is Wang Lei's self-description -
"Flying home is not difficult for me"
Why did you come up with the idea of flying home for the Chinese New Year?
My daughter is 7 years old, and she will follow me to play in the flight base in Lu'an during the winter vacation, and I feel less busy a year ago, and on January 30, I plan to take her back to my hometown of Lixin, Bozhou, for the New Year. The flight time from Lu'an to Lixin is relatively short, only 50 minutes.
Actually, this is not the first time my daughter has flown with me. I've been flying with her since kindergarten, and although I feel a little uncomfortable when taking off due to airflow, my daughter has grown accustomed to this feeling over time. I remember that day, after my daughter looked at the beautiful natural scenery below, she fell asleep halfway and woke up home.
This isn't the first time I've flown home. It's okay to drive home if you want to. This little plane is like my family's car, and it is a means of transportation for me. I work as a flight instructor, and I fly almost every day, sometimes six or seven hours a day. At one point, I even flew a plane just to get home to pick up a delivery.
Flying home is not a difficult task for me, as long as I look forward to the weather and plan well. Now the threshold for a pilot license for ordinary people has been lowered very low, and the purpose is also to allow more people to participate.
The cost of flying is about the same as driving, for us, the plane is our own, the route, the airspace does not cost money, as long as you apply in advance, the fuel cost of an hour is more than a hundred, but the plane can fly hundreds of kilometers in an hour.
Mid-flight
Many netizens watched the video of me flying a plane to take my daughter home for the New Year, and they were all questioning the same thing, that is, is it safe or not?
From a professional point of view, we often say four words: "people", "machine", "tube" and "ring". "People" refers to the need to have professional training; the safety of the aircraft is actually higher than that of bicycles, there are few real mechanical reasons, it is the people who are not safe, and all our flights and aircraft maintenance, the regulatory departments are to be regularly checked, and they must be replaced at the time; "Tube" refers to supervision, and all the processes of each flight are carried out under supervision; and finally the environment, which is very well explained, if the weather does not allow, the tower will not be released.
Some netizens asked, what if the engine stops? In fact, for us, this is a very small subject in the training process, and one of the pilot training courses is unpowered landing. An unpowered plane does not fall instantly, but has a gliding process, just like a paraglider, just find an open space in front of it and land down.
What many people don't know is that the plane I drove home for the New Year this time is a domestic plane, and the price is about 1.1 million, which was bought by our company. Our company is engaged in license training business in Anhui, which is the third low-altitude pilot in the country in addition to Hunan and Sichuan.
When many people mention domestic aircraft, the first thing that comes to mind is C919, in fact, there are many very reliable small aircraft. On the one hand, the choice of domestic aircraft is that the technical content does not need to be too high, and on the other hand, it is economical, more than one million cannot buy imported aircraft, but you can buy a reliable domestic aircraft.
Changed from a math teacher to a teacher for her dream
I am 35 years old this year, I used to be a mathematics teacher, after graduating from the Normal University, I entered the middle school to teach, at that time I was a teacher who did not follow the usual path, when I was a child, I always had a dream is to fly to the blue sky, and I want to fly with my daughter after I have a daughter. So I decided to switch careers and learn to fly.
Wang Lei
At first, my family was very supportive, and they thought that I was giving up my stable job as a teacher to do such a dangerous job. But I was determined to pursue my dream of flying.
The place where I learned to fly was in Suzhou, and I had to take the subway, high-speed rail, and then take a taxi to reach the training base in Suzhou, but sometimes I couldn't fly because the flight was greatly affected by the weather and air traffic control. After studying like this for more than half a year, I finally got the basic pilot license, and the tuition cost about 70,000 or 80,000 yuan.
After getting this basic license, I could only fly and play on my own, and I couldn't engage in commercial flying, and I had to take many subjects such as theory, so I wondered if I could start my own company and specialize in teaching flight licenses. It is best if you succeed in starting a business, and if you fail, I can be regarded as taking my daughter to soar over the great rivers and mountains of the motherland, and I have no regrets in life.
Most people can understand the idea of buying a car, but they don't understand buying a plane, including my parents, who came to me and said, "You can't plow the fields, why do you buy it?" I explained to them, one is because it's my hobby, and the other is that I'm very optimistic about the industry. Eventually, I overcame the obstacles and started my own company.
Later, I didn't expect more and more students to come to me, and there were even students I taught back then. From ordinary office workers to middle-class to CEOs of listed companies, most of them are flying dreams, and some are employment-oriented. Among them, the most are the students from Shanghai, and some students said that he just wanted to fly with his old mother.
During the Spring Festival, I will also plan to fly to visit relatives for the New Year
After the video went viral, there were more and more calls to me. Most people are curious and ask me how to fly and how much the plane costs. I consider myself the luckiest thing about being able to fly and earn money at the same time. We also plan to add new campsites after the Chinese New Year.
Some people want to follow my example, and they also want to fly home for the New Year in the future, I suggest that they still have a certain economic foundation, at least they can't overdraft consumption, and they can't do it blindly for the sake of face.
I myself am very optimistic about the development prospects of the low-altitude economy in China, the current mass base is still relatively weak, most people think that it is difficult to approve routes, the aircraft is very expensive, and the maintenance is very expensive, so I have the obligation to do a good job in the popularization of flight science;
I once saw a set of statistics, China has about 80,000 pilots, but the United States has more than 1 million pilots. Of the 80,000 books, more than 60,000 are large airplanes, only more than 10,000 are real general aviation books, and less than 2,000 are sports books. Therefore, our generation needs to catch up, if our generation does not work hard, and the next generation does not work hard, there will be no future for China's flight.
During the Spring Festival this year, our family plans to spend the New Year in our hometown, and we have no plans to travel. However, a more interesting idea came to my mind - I was going to fly a plane to take my daughter to visit relatives for the New Year.
News Morning Post Thoughtful APP reporter Niu Qiang
Source: Morning News