During the 1990s in China, the car was affordable to few, but it later shed its luxury status, and as sales grew, making it a mainstay of tens of millions of lives, it was transformed into an economic locomotive. A similar trajectory is forecast for the general aviation industry.

The National Bureau of Statistics says the country produced about 700,000 motor vehicles in 1991. Ten years later 18.5 million rolled off the production line, nearly 17.8 million of them being sold to Chinese.

The market for general aviation aircraft, ranging from helicopters to single-engine planes to business jets, is obviously a lot smaller, but it is the minuscule 1,200 registered aircraft that has the heads of industry insiders spinning.

Among them are aircraft makers, particularly in North America and Europe, which have a much longer history in developing general aviation than does China.

One such is Piaggio Aero of Italy, which delivered its first aircraft to China last month, and which nurses ambitions of being a big player in the Chinese market.

"Europe and the US have been our largest markets for a long time," said John Bingham, chief marketing officer of Piaggio Aero. "But China has the most opportunities to become the largest market in the future, because of the booming economy and people's increasing desire to embrace what is in fact a much better way to travel."

The European and North American markets have been in a lull because of the economic slump "for a ridiculous amount of time", Bingham said, "so we decided to open new markets to gain certifications to sell in 2009".

"We decided we could be more aggressive. We could go for some new markets, such as China."

In doing so, the company has teamed up with the Chinese distributor CAEA Aviation Investment Company, and was due to hand over two P180 Avanti II twin turboprop aircrafts to the Beijing company by the end of this year.

The aircraft is to be operated by CAEA subsidiary Free Sky Aviation in a new club-style shared-use program for private clients, Bingham said.

The company is confident of its future in China, he said.

 

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