Chapter 125 - 121 Please Fly the Plane_1

When New Yuan Aeronautics was preparing to connect with students from the Aerospace Institute to launch a free 80-hour initial training flight program, it created a strong impact among the students and teachers, as well as on the surrounding universities.

According to the internal calculation of Xinyuan Company at 600 yuan per hour, the cost of fuel and aircraft preparation alone for every 80 hours amounted to 48,000 yuan. Add in the initial training fees for instructors, costs for dedicated transport services, and so on, and one student would have to spend at least seventy or eighty thousand yuan.

The Aerospace Institute had a total of 2311 teachers, and 2077 were approved after review. This equated to 150 million yuan.

New Yuan offered training every Saturday from 8 am to 3 pm, with a one-hour break included, totaling 6 hours of training. The first four weeks were exclusively for theoretical learning. The initial 40 hours of flight time were part of the teaching stage, led by instructors. After completing the 40 hours, students who passed could fly solo.

After the 80 free flight hours, top-performing flight students could earn between 2 to 10 free flight hours per week based on their rating, or they could obtain certain free flight hours through their professional ranking. For the rest, they would have to pay, but there were still discounts according to their professional rankings, ranging from 100 to 400 yuan per hour.

Lin Ju announced this decision at the school’s sports field. According to those present at the time, the great Mr. Lin grandly declared:

"80 hours, 100,000 yuan in training fees—New Yuan will cover it all! It’s all for the physical strengthening and skill enhancement of university students, with no contractual restrictions. As long as the health requirements are met, any eligible student can sign up and come!"

The students who had been summoned and were expecting yet another meaningless pep talk went silent in an instant, but then burst into a tsunami of cheers that drowned out Lin Ju’s microphone.

It’s unclear who started it, but someone shouted "Long live Factory Manager Lin," and then the whole sports field echoed in unison with cries of "long live," which gave Lin Ju goosebumps all over.

If the security guards and student union hadn’t desperately held them back, it’s likely that some excited female students would have charged forward and ’devoured’ Lin Ju right there and then.

The students who had been forcefully allocated to the Aerospace Institute initially held some grudges, but now, thanks to this unexpected windfall, their attitudes were entirely reversed, and they were willing to go through fire and water for New Yuan.

Students from other institutes were green with envy. Freshmen were already devising strategies on how to transfer to the Aerospace Institute, older students were trying to find ways to work at New Yuan, and even the professors and teachers were seething with jealousy.

In fact, if China’s industrial development had allowed for the opening up of the aviation sector, civil aviation would definitely have become more widespread than in America because the vast market would drive prices down, making aviation a common industry against all odds.

In recent years, more and more people have been yearning for the sky, spending quite a bit of money to ride in helicopters or in tourist planes, with the wealthier ones even learning how to fly.

However, because the sky is under the jurisdiction of the Air Force, no matter how powerful one might be, applying for a flight route is a troublesome affair; any sort of aircraft requires approval before taking to the skies. The idea of taking off in a small plane from a farm for fun, as is done in America, doesn’t exist here.

In America, the airspace below 3,000 meters is completely open, which is simply unthinkable in China.

And it so happens that Xinyuan Company could use its capabilities to remove this obstacle and even offer it for free—so who wouldn’t want to go?

Lin Ju was very satisfied with such a response and decided to implement the program at the other universities they collaborated with—every student in the associated programs would enjoy this treatment!

A few days later, this matter completely blew up on the internet.

For three consecutive days, "Baidu’s Lady" and blog search rankings placed "Factory Manager Lin Invites You to Fly a Plane" at number one.

The most crowded was the forum section of Southern Machinery Institute, where the details of the cooperation with Xinyuan Company were displayed, bringing in a crazy amount of traffic.

"I declare that Ma Yun is no longer my father. Now, Factory Manager Lin is my father!"

"Never thought the day would come when I, with my 400-degree myopia, could fly a plane. The physical exam doctor said I’m a bit overweight; I might have to go on a diet. Starting from tomorrow, I’ll hit the gym!"

"I’ve heard that flying a plane is very draining. I’ll start abstaining from ’fueling up’ from tomorrow!"

"Is Boss Lin so flush with cash he doesn’t know where to spend it? With all this money, why not donate it to the western regions?"

"Isn’t Rong City in the western region, though?"

"Every day I see J-7s, J-10s, and J-20s flying around, and now it’s finally my turn to fly. I’m going to swoop past the instructor’s office! That old Deng even does bed checks at night, pssh!"

"I’m jealous. I’m from the neighboring Petroleum University. Can I go into space if I do postgraduate studies at the Aerospace Institute? I’m taking the exam next year. It’s a non-985, non-211 university, but hey, I’d get to fly planes."

"If you can fly a plane now, does that mean you might be able to fly rockets in the future?"

"600 an hour is way too expensive, though. Two hours and there goes my monthly living expenses."

"It costs 70 liters of fuel per hour to fly the initial training aircraft, bro. Even with this price, Factory Manager Lin is going to lose money. It’s only open to students and professors."

"I want to bear Factory Manager Lin’s monkeys!"

"Question: can girls fly too? What if you have sensitive skin?"

"..."

Lin Ju’s grand move also sparked a social media frenzy, beginning a discussion about whether China would follow America in opening up its airspace. Some "experts" started calling for the liberalization of airspace, and then some others argued why it could not be done—it was like a significant social debate."

However, the happiest of all might just be China’s aircraft manufacturers.

The Colorful Cloud initial teaching machine was simple, but it was not ready for mass production. New Yuan had no plans to start dedicated production lines and become an aircraft manufacturer, so all the planes for subsequent training were being offloaded onto the domestic market.

The number wasn’t small—2,000 planes, with New Yuan handling the fly-by-wire flight control systems and subcontractors taking care of the airframes, all for the unit price of 300,000 each.

Based on market prices, they should have cost about 450,000 to break even, but an order for 2,000 planes was enough to knock down the price by a third of a hundred thousand Yuan.

Keep in mind that since the production of the initial training model in 1958, the total number produced had barely exceeded 2,500 units!

This was essentially buying up a whole Chinese Air Force’s worth of training aircraft in one order—who wouldn’t want it? The total came to 660 million Yuan, and the technology involved wasn’t even that complex.

In the end, Stone Flight and Hongdu jointly won the contract, agreeing to deliver it all within a year, with the first 120 planes due within the first month.

The Southern Machinery Institute also mysteriously benefited, with orders for 2,200 specially designed V8 aero-engines, plus subsequent technical support and maintenance services—not a small amount of money, either.

Taking into account the number of employees that Xinyuan Company was training, in two to three years, they’d have 6,000 astronauts/payload specialists who, with a bit of training, could enter space. They’d also be able to expand system missions. Isn’t that wonderful?

When the Aerospace Institute’s big shots saw the news, they were quite bemused.

Of course, they knew the real reason behind Lin Ju offering free flying lessons, but even if they launched the Unity mission once a month, they’d only be able to send 72 people a year. With so many people preparing to go into space, were they planning to build rockets in space or colonize Mars?

The Rong City Military Region was also surprised. They had their eyes on the Colorful Cloud training aircraft. Even though it was just an initial trainer, it lavishly utilized fly-by-wire controls and was much easier to fly than the initial trainers.

As soon as they inquired about the purchase price, which was almost half as much again as the initial trainers, they backed off.

Still, the Air Force did come to Xinyuan Company for many discussions. After all, with 2,000 aircraft on hand—even if only 200 were flying at the same time—the skies would be a complete mess, and they had to organize a dedicated air command for these trainees; otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to manage any emergency situations.