Information from the Civil Aviation Administration website on December 22 shows that the "13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of China's Civil Aviation" has defined five major tasks for civil aviation development during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, including ensuring continuous aviation safety, building a national comprehensive airport system, comprehensively enhancing aviation service capabilities, improving air traffic control support service levels, and promoting transformation and development through reform and innovation.

　　Significant Increase in Infrastructure

　　The Plan sets out the main objectives for the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, including maintaining a leading safety level, continuously strengthening strategic roles, steadily increasing civil aviation's contribution to the national economy, with the proportion of passenger turnover reaching 28%; total transport turnover reaching 142 billion ton-kilometers, passenger transport volume of 720 million person-trips, and cargo and mail transport volume of 8.5 million tons, with average annual growth of 10.8%, 10.4%, and 6.2% respectively; the number of transport airports reaching about 260, basically completing an airport network with reasonable layout, complete functions, and safety and efficiency; the bottleneck constraint of insufficient airspace being alleviated, and air traffic control support capabilities steadily improving; general aviation flourishing, with infrastructure significantly increased, a standards system basically established, the operating environment continuously improved, and service areas continuously expanded. General aviation airports reaching more than 500, general aviation aircraft reaching more than 5,000, and total flight hours reaching 2 million hours; green development deeply advanced, and a green civil aviation standards system established, etc.

　　Promoting General Aviation Development

　　On December 22, the "2017 National Civil Aviation Work Conference and Aviation Safety Work Conference" was held in Beijing. The conference proposed eight major tasks for civil aviation work in 2017, focusing on industry resource allocation efficiency and general aviation development.

　　Among them, it is necessary to strengthen the airport network functions. Efforts should be made to build large international aviation hubs, solidly advance the construction of world-class airport clusters in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta regions; accelerate the implementation of the strategic plan for the Urumqi international aviation hub, and promote the construction of the Kunming gateway hub airport.

　　Optimize the route network layout. Enhance hub transfer functions, encourage increased flights between regional hub airports and large hubs and gateway hubs, and focus on creating air express lines between airports with annual passenger throughput of more than 10 million person-trips; optimize international aviation policies and build a hub-oriented air rights opening pattern; accelerate the coordinated development of civil aviation in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and relieve the non-international aviation hub functions of Capital Airport; promote the liberalization of the air transport market along the "Belt and Road", and strive to cultivate a route network that combines trunk and branch lines, connects branch lines, and smoothly connects domestic and international routes.

　　In addition, efforts should be made to cultivate large network airlines with international competitiveness, and support base airlines to become larger and stronger.

　　At the same time, innovate general aviation development policies. Lower the threshold for licensing and certification of commercial general aviation enterprises, and simplify the registration management of non-commercial general aviation. Lower the threshold for the introduction of general aviation aircraft. Expand general aviation service areas. Formulate management measures for the operating licenses of unmanned aerial vehicles and sports aircraft.

　　Compile general airport management regulations, and implement classified and graded management of general airports. Improve the construction of general airport standards, and promote the formulation of water airport construction standards. Accelerate the construction of general aviation infrastructure, and encourage enterprises and individuals to invest in the establishment of general airports. Encourage regional airports to add general aviation facilities and carry out general aviation business. Standardize the items and standards of airport service charges for general aviation business.

　　Improve the general aviation management model. Promote classified and graded management, and explore new paths for general aviation development.