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China has restricted flights of private light fixed-wing aircraft after a plane crashed into Beijing’s tallest building last week, according to operators around the country.
Three operators of small propeller-driven aircraft and one glider company told the FT that they had been grounded after the incident late on Friday, in which a small plane struck Citic Tower, killing the pilot and injuring 13 others.
An employee at Weland Skydive club in Danzhou in Hainan, China’s southernmost province, said it had suspended skydiving and paragliding services because of a “nationwide airspace control” order covering recreational flights.
“Any activities that require flying are banned,” said the employee, who declined to be named, adding that there was no clear timeline for the restrictions to be lifted.
The airspace restrictions, which have not been publicly announced, came after a small plane with the registration number B-12PP took off from a flight school on the eastern outskirts of Beijing and hit the 528-metre headquarters of one of China’s biggest state-owned financial groups.
The crash occurred at rush hour on Friday in one of Beijing’s busiest business districts, just kilometres from the secretive compound that houses China’s political leadership.
It shocked residents of Beijing, who are accustomed to exhaustive security precautions to protect top officials. China also maintains some of the world’s strictest aviation controls, particularly in the capital.
In a statement on Saturday nearly 24 hours after the crash, authorities said the incident was under investigation. They did not provide details about the pilot. Discussion and images of the crash were also quickly censored on Chinese social media.
Aircraft activity in China other than cargo and commercial services fell sharply on Saturday following the incident, according to Flightradar24, which tracks live flight data.
Flights in northern China ceased immediately while those around the western city of Chengdu, a hub for private recreational aviation, continued into Sunday but ceased around midnight, Flightradar24 data showed.
A Chengdu aviation club said its aircraft had been grounded since the weekend and would remain so until it received a directive from the Civil Aviation Administration of China to resume operations. It said the suspension was nationwide and there was no guidance on when it would be lifted.
A glider operator near Beijing cited the same CAAC notice, saying that glider flights were suspended nationwide.
The CAAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China, the world’s biggest producer of drones, has bet heavily on the development of a “low-altitude economy”, which also covers flying cars and taxis. Chengdu alone has set a target of Rmb45bn ($6.6bn) for the low-altitude economy by the end of 2026.
But authorities introduced new laws this year that banned unmanned aerial vehicles from most of the capital city and tightly restricted their use elsewhere in the country.
An instructor at a drone pilot training school in Beijing’s Yanqing district, an area designated for drone activities, said the company was informed that all flights had been banned since Sunday. The company had switched to indoor classes.
It was not clear, however, if the airspace restrictions extended to all drones. One drone hobbyist in the southern tech hub of Shenzhen said he flew a drone in an urban area on Saturday without constraints.
Drone pilot schools in Shenzhen and neighbouring Guangzhou and Foshan also said classes were operating as usual.
Tarhe, a skydiving club in Haitang Bay in Sanya, the capital of Hainan, said it had also been ordered to ground its aircraft.
“You can still book a skydiving session,” an employee said on Monday. “But there’s a nationwide airspace control in effect, so I’m not sure when the aircraft will be allowed to take off.”
Reporting by Joe Leahy, Eleanor Olcott, Wenjie Ding, Cheng Leng and Tina Hu in Beijing, William Langley and Shihuan Chen in Guangdong and Nian Liu in Shanghai. Cartography by Haohsiang Ko in Hong Kong and Steve Bernard in London
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