When China's air industry hits the news, stories are typically centered on passengers going rogue, punching each other, trying to wrestle open emergency doors mid-takeoff or dangerously tossing coins into airplane engines for luck. While alarming and fascinating in equal measure, these headlines conceal another tale -- one of a country undergoing a breakneck expansion into the world of flying as its people take to the sky in rapidly increasing numbers.
In the space of barely more than a decade, China has transformed from a nation where few had ever experienced air travel to one where millions of its citizens are flying not only across their own vast territory, but to destinations around the world. Such is the pace of China's ascension to the jet age that stories of wayward passengers are perhaps inevitable -- even if they obscure the fact that many air journeys in China are incident free. But there's more to come.
In the space of barely more than a decade, China has transformed from a nation where few had ever experienced air travel to one where millions of its citizens are flying not only across their own vast territory, but to destinations around the world. Such is the pace of China's ascension to the jet age that stories of wayward passengers are perhaps inevitable -- even if they obscure the fact that many air journeys in China are incident free. But there's more to come.
