National Day Special 1: Low-Altitude Expansion, Trillion-Dollar Launch - The '15th Five-Year Plan' Guides the Low-Altitude Economy toward Systematic Development

"14th Five-Year Plan" period, China's low-air economy has made significant progress. As a typical representative of new quality productivity and a strategic emerging industry, the low-air economy has gradually established its position. General aviation, drones, and new types of aircraft have developed rapidly. The number of general aviation enterprises, general airports, and drone flights continues to increase. The low-air economy is expanding from traditional general aviation operations to diverse scenarios such as industrial inspection, agricultural and forestry pest control, logistics transportation, emergency rescue, urban governance, and low-air culture and tourism. The equipment supply, infrastructure, and business entities required for industrial development have initially taken shape. At the same time, the rapid expansion of the industry has also accelerated the core contradictions between the supply of low-air equipment and operational support capabilities, mainly reflected in the contradiction between the rapidly increasing number of aircraft and the relatively limited available airspace, flight routes, and air traffic management capabilities. There is also the contradiction between the acceleration of local infrastructure and industrial project construction and the insufficient formation of high-frequency, sustainable flight demands. Additionally, there are contradictions between the rapid advancement of overall machine technology and scenario innovation and the relatively lagging airworthiness certification, standard system, safety supervision, and cross-regional coordination mechanisms.

"15th Five-Year Plan" period, the low-air economy will move from the early policy cultivation, business entity expansion, and demonstration application stage to the stage of large-scale equipment delivery, networked infrastructure construction, and concentrated commercial scenario verification. As the number of low-air aircraft and flight density continue to increase, the demand for urban and cross-regional operations will rise, and safety supervision requirements will also increase simultaneously. Simply relying on expanding overall machine production capacity, building general airports, and adding takeoff and landing sites is no longer sufficient to support the large-scale development of the industry. Overall machine enterprises will face pressures such as airworthiness certification, mass delivery, reliability verification, and cost reduction throughout the entire life cycle. Operating enterprises need to solve problems such as route resources, flight approval, scenario repeat purchase, and unit operating costs. In the future, it is necessary to coordinate low-air equipment, airspace resources, flight route networks, infrastructure, application scenarios, and safety supervision, accelerate the construction of a low-air intelligent network system covering communication, navigation, surveillance, meteorology, and flight services, and promote the low-air economy to shift from product development and single demonstration to safe, high-frequency, cross-regional, and sustainable commercial operation.

"15th Five-Year Plan" period, China will promote the healthy and orderly development of the low-air economy and include it in the cultivation system of strategic emerging industries and emerging pillar industries. The "15th Five-Year Plan" further makes systematic arrangements around low-air equipment, flight routes and infrastructure, application scenarios, and institutional guarantees. Focus will be placed on developing large-load, long-range, intelligent low-air aircraft, building low-air flight routes, low-air intelligent network and security protection systems, expanding applications in logistics transportation, medical rescue, urban governance, agricultural and forestry operations, and surveying and mapping inspection, and improving airspace management, airworthiness certification, and flight safety supervision systems. The focus of the low-air economy development will shift from increasing the number of aircraft and infrastructure to improving operational efficiency, expanding effective demand, and improving security protection systems. We believe the following development changes are particularly noteworthy:

In terms of industrial positioning

The "15th Five-Year Plan Outline" clearly states "promoting the healthy and orderly development of the low-air economy," including the low-air economy in the cultivation system of strategic emerging industries and emerging pillar industries. The 2026 Government Work Report further proposed creating the low-air economy as an "emerging pillar industry." This means that the policy goal of the low-air economy has shifted from cultivating new growth points to forming a pillar industry with a large economic scale, strong industrial driving force, and a complete industrial ecosystem.

In terms of technical equipment

The plan proposes accelerating the development of new low-air equipment such as large-load fixed-wing drones and long-range vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, focusing on breaking through key technologies such as intelligent flight, electric propulsion, hybrid power, and low-cost drone safety prevention. The policy does not broadly support all low-air aircraft, but focuses on promoting the industrialization of products with greater payload, longer range, higher intelligence level, and stronger safety capabilities.

In terms of infrastructure

The plan emphasizes "using scenario expansion as a driving force to scientifically design low-air flight routes," configuring takeoff and landing, communication, navigation, surveillance, meteorology, and other facilities along the flight routes. At the same time, build low-air intelligent network systems and security protection capabilities for key areas. Its core is not to build a large number of takeoff and landing sites without demand, but to build a low-air infrastructure network that can support regular operations around actual flight routes and scenarios.

In terms of application scenarios

The plan proposes implementing large-scale application demonstrations of new technologies, new products, and new scenarios, and increasing scenario cultivation and openness. Scenarios with clear demand and payment entities, such as logistics transportation, medical rescue, urban governance, agricultural and forestry operations, and surveying and mapping inspection, will become the main breakthrough points for the low-air economy to shift from demonstration application to large-scale operation.

In terms of institutional guarantees

The plan requires improving the refinement level of low-air airspace management, strengthening airworthiness certification capabilities, enhancing low-air flight safety protection, and promoting legislation related to the low-air economy. The policy approach is not simply "liberating low-air," but to create institutional conditions for high-frequency and cross-regional flights by refining airspace classification, improving approval efficiency, improving airworthiness and supervision standards.

The number of general aviation enterprises and airports continues to grow, and the industry development already has basic conditions

During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the number of general aviation business entities and infrastructure in China continued to grow. From 2018 to 2025, the number of general aviation enterprises increased from 422 to 773, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 9.0%; the number of general airports increased from 202 to 513, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 14.2%, initially forming a business foundation and airport network to support the development of the low-air economy.

Looking at marginal changes, from 2024 to 2025, the number of general aviation enterprises only increased from 760 to 773, with the growth rate dropping to about 1.7%. During the same period, the number of general airports still increased from 475 to 513. The growth rate of business entities slowed significantly, while infrastructure continued to expand, indicating that the main contradictions in industry development are shifting from insufficient numbers of enterprises and facilities to insufficient actual flight demand, low utilization rates of facilities, and immature operation models.

Source: Frost & Sullivan Analysis

"15th Five-Year Plan" period, the construction of low-air infrastructure will pay more attention to matching flight routes and application scenarios. New general airports and takeoff and landing sites will still be part of industrial investment, but policy and market evaluation criteria will shift more towards actual flight frequencies, the number of regular routes, infrastructure coverage capabilities, and operating income. Areas with stable scenario demands, route resources, and flight service capabilities are better positioned to transform existing infrastructure into industrial output.

The market size of China's low-air economy overall machines will grow from 859.2 billion yuan in 2025 to 2064.5 billion yuan in 2030, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 19.2% during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period. Low-air overall machines will still be the largest component of the industry, driving the growth of industrial chain segments such as power systems, flight control, avionics, chips, sensors, composite materials, and energy systems.

The plan focuses on supporting new equipment such as large-load fixed-wing drones and long-range vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, and takes intelligent flight, electric propulsion, hybrid power, and low-cost safety prevention technologies as the main breakthrough directions. The equipment development during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period will not stop at expanding traditional drone production capacity, but will focus on improving the load capacity, range, intelligence level, safety redundancy, and adaptability to complex environments of aircraft.

As the industry enters the stage of airworthiness certification and mass delivery, competition among overall machine enterprises will shift from concept design, prototype first flight, and individual performance comparison to airworthiness progress, model orders, mass production yield, delivery timing, operational reliability, and full life cycle cost. Enterprises with core system autonomy, stable supply chains, and scene customer bases are more likely to capture the incremental growth brought by the expansion of the overall machine market.

Source: Frost & Sullivan Analysis

The market size of China's low-air economy air traffic management system will grow from 2.07 billion yuan in 2025 to 6.5 billion yuan in 2030, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 25.7% during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, higher than the 19.2% growth rate of the overall machine market during the same period.

The fast growth of the air traffic management system market reflects that the development of the low-air economy is shifting from increasing the number of aircraft to improving flight density and operational complexity. Single or low-frequency flights have relatively limited requirements for the air traffic management system. However, with the increase in scenarios such as logistics routes, urban governance, emergency rescue, and manned transportation, low-air flights will gradually show characteristics of multiple entities, high frequency, cross-regional, and mixed operation, putting higher demands on communication, navigation, surveillance, meteorology, flight route planning, identity recognition, and dynamic scheduling capabilities.

The "15th Five-Year Plan" proposes using scenario expansion as a driving force to scientifically design low-air flight routes, configure takeoff and landing, communication, navigation, surveillance, meteorology, and other infrastructure along the flight routes, and promote the construction of low-air intelligent network systems and security protection capabilities for key areas. Thus, the construction model of low-air infrastructure will shift from scattered airport and takeoff and landing site construction to an integrated layout of flight routes, takeoff and landing facilities, perception network, operation platform, and security protection system. Fields such as air traffic management platform, low-air intelligent network, avionics meteorology, drone identification, and countermeasures are expected to become fast-growing segments during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period.

Source: Frost & Sullivan Analysis

The "15th Five-Year Plan" emphasizes increasing scenario cultivation and openness, implementing large-scale application demonstrations of new technologies, new products, and new scenarios. The policy goal of the low-air economy shifts from verifying whether products can fly to verifying whether scenarios can operate regularly and generate sustainable income.

From a commercialization perspective, scenarios such as industrial inspection, agricultural and forestry operations, surveying and mapping, emergency rescue, medical transportation, and logistics in specific regions have characteristics such as clear demand, clear payment entities, and high value of manual substitution. It is expected to expand flight scale first. Among them, scenarios such as energy inspection, agricultural and forestry pest control, and surveying and mapping already have a certain market foundation; medical transportation, mountain logistics, and emergency rescue have strong timeliness value and can form a commercial closed loop in some regions first.

Urban manned transportation and large-scale low-air passenger transport still need to solve problems such as airworthiness certification, flight route design, takeoff and landing facilities, safety responsibilities, noise control, and public acceptance. In the early stage of the "15th Five-Year Plan," it is expected to mainly focus on airworthiness certification, route verification, and trial operation in limited areas. Its industrial contribution is more reflected in research and development, airworthiness, and infrastructure investment, and the large-scale commercial expansion may be relatively delayed.

Source: Frost & Sullivan Analysis

The low-air economy industry ecosystem includes not only overall machine and component manufacturing, but also flight operation, infrastructure, air traffic management system, testing and certification, maintenance support, flight training, insurance leasing, and data services. As the number of aircraft and flight hours increase, industrial value will gradually shift from equipment procurement to continuous operation and post-market services.

Overall machine sales usually generate one-time income, while air traffic management services, maintenance support, training, insurance, and data services can continuously generate demand along with flight activities. Especially when the price of aircraft procurement is high and the operating risks are complex, financial leasing, insurance, and professional operation services help reduce the entry barriers for users and improve the cash flow and cash situation of overall machine enterprises.

Therefore, during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the main opportunities in the low-air economy will not be concentrated only in the overall machine manufacturing field. Operation enterprises with airspace and route resources, industry customer base, operation qualifications, safety management system, and scheduling capabilities, as well as core components, air traffic management systems, and testing and certification enterprises entering the airworthiness model supply chain, also have strong development potential.

Source: Frost & Sullivan Analysis