People's Republic of China
Air transportation for the President, Premier or government officials of the People's Republic of China is managed and operated by the 34th division of People's Liberation Army Air Force. Boeing 737s are used for these missions.
- Boeing 737-76D × 2: B-4025, B-4026
- Boeing 737-34N × 2: B-4020, B-4021
- Boeing 737-33A × 2: B-4018, B-4019
- Boeing 737-3TO × 2: B-4008, B-4009
- Boeing 737-3Q8 × 2: B-4052, B-4053
- Tu-154 × ?
- Bombardier CRJ200 ER × 8~10
- Bombardier Challenger 600 × 10
- Learjet 45 × ?
A Boeing 767-300ER (formerly B-4025) was purchased by the Chinese government for use by President Jiang Zemin in 2000. This Boeing 767 was originally ordered by Delta Air Lines. An international incident occurred in 2001 when the government claimed it had discovered 27 bugs embedded in the aircraft's interior; the plane had been refitted in San Antonio, Texas. It had since been converted back to a normal passenger airliner and transferred to Air China as B-2499.
The PLAAF 34th division was formed in 1959. Types of aircraft formerly used for VIP air transportation including Vickers Viscount, Ilyushin Il-18 and Hawker Siddeley Trident. The plane which crashed in Mongolia in 1971, carrying defecting marshal Lin Biao, was a Trident registered as CAAC B-256, piloted by Pan Jingyin (潘景寅), deputy commander of the 34th division.
Read more about this topic: Air Transports Of Heads Of State And Government
Famous quotes containing the words people, republic and/or china:
“The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidents—or at least their staffs—never stop making mischief.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.... It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)