As private cars are no longer luxury dreamboats for many Chinese, some magnates, especially in the booming eastern region, are turning to private planes to get around.

According to Monday's Morning Express, a new EC120B helicopter bought from France was being assembled in Jinhua on December 7, making its owner, photo frame entrepreneur Wang Bin, the second magnate who pilots a private plane above the sky of the eastern province of Zhejiang.

A couple from Leqing Flying Club experience flying a plane in this undated photo. [Xinhua]

In 1997 China's first private plane took to the skies in Changsha, a year after the Civil Aviation Administration of China opened private plane license training. Flight pioneer Zhang Yue, who is the head of an air-conditioner enterprise has been flying ever since.

Until 2003, Li Daolin from Shanghai bought the country's second private plane. In December of the next year, Qiu Dedao, a Zhejiang corporate president, bought a business jet for US$6.3 million, which reportedly rivals Bill Gates' aircraft.

In the meantime, ambitious Zhang has acquired three jets, two 172R light aircraft, and another helicopter. Later, another businessman, Xu Weijie from Wenzhou, Zhejiang, initiated the Leqing Flying Club, which claimed to have thirty-nine private planes owned by club members, mainly from the Wenzhou Commerce Chamber.

At Airshow China 2006, which ended on November 5, the domestic Eagle-500, a small plane, drew a lot of attention from visitors, and was affordably priced at about two million yuan.

"The door to private planes has opened in China, and we are honored to act as the ones opening it," an official from the Shijiazhuang Aircraft Industry Corporation, producer of the Eagle-500, told Xinhua at the airshow, adding that they had received 151 aircraft orders, of which a large proportion were placed by private clients.

According to Austria's Diamond Aircraft Industries, Chinese market demand for private planes is expected to reach one thousand in five or ten years.

Many may dream of flying, but the preparation and certification needed to realize that dream are anything but easy. A private plane needs a nationality registry certificate, a certificate of airworthiness, and an aircraft station license in order to fly.

Private aircraft have to apply for a flight route and permission to land at civil airports at least 24 hours in advance, and some airports require two or three days advance notice. In order to avoid this, private craft owner Wang Bin hired two helicopter pilots and commissioned a professional helicopter company to deal with the authorities, for an annual fee of one million yuan.

These kinds of problems could fade out in the coming years. According to the eleventh Five-Year Plan, China will gradually open air space under 600 metres to private planes.

Under the new policies, there will be a demand for 2,500 pilots in China each year, while the country can only train about 1,000 annually, leaving a large piece of the market to private flight schools.