China Takes Off

The largest nation on Earth is flying more people more places than ever before. Its struggle to do so without (further) destroying the environment could show the rest of the world a greener way to travel

By James Fallows Posted 05.08.2012 at 10:01 am 6 Comments

Air China: Air China Boeing 747-4J6 Wikimedia Commons

After 18 months of work, the approach was drawn up, and the autopilots had done fine—in simulations. But no real airliner had flown the course in real circumstances. On July 12, 2006, Fulton joined a group of Chinese pilots and aviation officials crowded into the cockpit of an Air China 757 as it made a historic first test flight into Linzhi.

You can watch the last six minutes of that approach on YouTube, and they are riveting. The crew is talking in Chinese the whole time, but you can hear Fulton’s voice in the international language of aviation, English, calling out altitudes as they head down. Because this was a test flight, and no one had proven that the autopilots could keep them from running into a mountain in the clouds, they were required to conduct the flight under VFR conditions. Fulton had carefully arranged with the Air China crew the circumstances under which they would break off the flight if it turned out that the mapping was wrong or the autopilots didn’t work or the weather got too bad.

“As we turned each corner in the valley and went into each new segment of the approach, we kept being just under the clouds,” Fulton recalled. Indeed, that is what the video shows—the cloud level coming down, and the plane descending just enough below it so that the pilots could still see ahead of them. “It was a kind of ballet down the river valley, with sweeping turns back and forth.” Then, at 200 feet above ground level—practically landing, from the layman’s point of view—the plane’s autopilots made an S-turn around a crag that sat between it and the runway. The plane automatically veered around the final obstacle, aligned itself with the runway, and touched down exactly on the center line. The 15 people jammed in and around the cockpit—including brass from Air China and the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC)—gave a round of applause. “Captain Jiang, the senior Air China pilot, turned to me and said, ‘I have full confidence in this technology!’ ” Fulton later told me. “We all knew that people from the minister on down would have been fired if we’d crashed.”

Algae-based fuel could,
in principle, allow airplanes to fly on something closer to a “carbon-neutral” basis.Instead, the CAAC vice minister proclaimed that “the future looks good for RNP technology in China.” Six weeks later, the first regular commercial airline flight ever to reach Linzhi touched down, guided through clouds and difficult weather along the RNP path. Naverus won contracts to develop several more approaches in China, starting with Bangda, at its unmatched 14,219-foot elevation, and then for another Tibetan airport, Nagqu, which when it opens in 2015 will be even higher. The business boomed so much that in late 2009 the Naverus company was acquired by GE and is now known as GE Aviation PBN Services. Boeing and Airbus now have their own subsidiaries working on RNP approaches. There is a race to cover China with these new navigation systems that will make travel to remote areas safer, more reliable and more fuel-efficient.

“The point is that they can navigate to any airport in the world with absolutely nothing on the ground,” Sergio von Borries, a pilot from Brazil who had become a vice president of strategic development at Naverus, told me at a conference in China. “These truly are the highways in the sky, and we are the highway engineers.”

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6 Comments

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den72

04/26/12 at 3:33 pm

I am amazed Popsci would run an article that questions the morality of using corn for bio fuel, but has no concerns at all about opening up Tibetan airports. Since annexing the area the Chinese have been trying to move as many mainlanders into the region as possible to diminish any dissent. The only thing slowing them down has been geographic isolation of the area. Thanks to GE, however, they can now land as many jumbo jets in the area as they need. Maybe next month we can celebrate how American companies are helping use the internet regimes to crack down on dissent in Iran and Syria.

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den72

04/26/12 at 3:41 pm

Correction last line should read: Maybe next month we can celebrate how American companies are helping regimes use the internet to crack down on dissent in Ir an and Syria.

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Robot

05/08/12 at 10:43 am

At the end of the article, I found it most interesting to learn about algae as an energy source and it being CO2 carbon neutral to the environment. As algae grows it removes C02 from the environment, so when we burn algae the C02 is released, leaving a balance of carbon in the environment.

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!

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sethdayal

05/08/12 at 1:30 pm

Obviously using combining carbon from biomass or atmosphere extraction then combining it with nuke hydrogen is far cheaper than algae to produce jet fuel. Shell Qatar GTL plant is already doing it with natural gas making a profit at under $25 a barrel market.

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Tin_Kin

05/17/12 at 7:45 pm

This would mark China's stance as a favorable investment climate in the growing autocratic world. By knowingly choosing to relinquish their military control in favor a favorable aviation climate could result in an influx of travelers. This is not a matter of green versus military but simply a matter of conservative authoritarian policies versus the future of economic innovation in China. China may or may not honor the request of an industry who already turns a profit despite the increasing cost of fuel. This is a matter of trust and the example set by this situations outcome shall determine whether China is a favorable government for international communication. May China make its choice knowing it sets not only an example for economic innovation but military and government advancement and reform. China has set previous precedents deeming a minor economic motive as an insufficient exception to military restrictions and government policies. It comes down to the economic necessity the rest of the world is in to change and adapt to a worsening economy due to an oil reliance paired with an increasing debt to the Chinese government. Currently China has yet to match international trends (favoring domestic and government controlled innovation) and in turn their influence shall soon lead to many more policies that do not benefit the earth and atmosphere. Finally China has a government body playing an intricate role in the fate of the economy while the majority of the world has a corporate ruling body without the restrictions or growth of the Chinese both of which are ignorant of their effects on the environment. While the USA and Europe may require innovations in aviation to continue to turn a profit the way to accomplish this potentially unreachable feat is to not make yet another product that in the long term only stimulates the Chinese economy and increases national debt. No foreign or corporate body is willing to take a stand and promote an innovative policy of aviation, while aware that it would directly restrict the Chinese governments policies, fearing economic and civil repercussions. Is the rest of the world prepared to rely on the Chinese for algae fuel as well as debt?

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Sean_OHanlon

05/18/12 at 12:30 pm

Algae technologies are already Carbon Negative. Here's how: Algae is comprised of three main components; Lipids (Oil), Proteins, and Carbohydrates. Carbon is the 6th most common element in the universe and bonds to nearly everything just like hydrogen. That means not all of the CO2 captured will be re-released since only the algae oil is used to make biofuels. The best part of all? Algae love to clean which means they are the perfect organisms for treating municipal waste-water and runoff from agriculture.

The race to full scale commercialization of Algae is one that the US can, should, and must win.

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