As China prepares for the Lunar New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, the country's huge population braces for the annual Chunyun, or travel rush, to reunite with family.?
Among the millions making their journey home is a man from Anhui province who devised a novel technique to avoid the legendary traffic congestion that plague this time of year.?
According to the South China Morning Post, Wang, a pilot trainer living in eastern China, faced a common dilemma: how to secure his daughter's timely arrival for Lunar New Year celebrations with his parents. Wang chose a different way of transportation after realising that there could be hours of traffic congestion on the roads.
He opted to fly his seven-year-old daughter to their rural village in a two-seater plane.
According to the news outlet, Wang's trip took only 50 minutes to reach his parents' home, saving him a huge amount of time compared to the customary two-hour journey.
"The small aeroplane we used cost 1.1 million yuan (Rs 12826329.11) and could fly 1,200 kilometres on a full tank of fuel," Wang told the South China Morning Post (SCMP).?
To make the flight possible, Wang needed to register for the route ahead of time and obtain permission to park the plane at a flying camp near his parents' home. The unique means of transportation not only provided Wang and his daughter with a quick and easy ride, but it also garnered notice online.
China's Chunyun is known as the world's greatest yearly human migration, with billions of passengers estimated to travel throughout the 40-day period between January 26 and March 5.?
According to SCMP, this year's predicted 9 billion journeys are a huge increase above the 4.7 billion trips reported during last year's Spring Festival.?
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on travel patterns, with up to 7.2 billion journeys predicted to be self-driving, a popular option for individuals looking to escape crowded public transportation.?
A traveler called Peng told SCMP that since 2020, he has preferred self-driving over train or aircraft travel owing of the pandemic.?
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