Article 2: The airspace above the land and territorial waters of the People’s Republic of China is the airspace of the People’s Republic of China. The People’s Republic of China has complete and exclusive sovereignty over its airspace.

——The Civil Aviation Law of the People’s Republic of China

Due to the policy of one country, two systems, and other historical legacy issues, there are four civil aviation administration departments in China. They are the Civil Aviation Administration of China (China Mainland), Civil Aviation Department (Hong Kong), Civil Aviation Authority (Macau), and Civil Aviation Administration, MOTC (Taiwan). Each controls some parts of the airspace in China.

Civil Aviation Administration of China:

• ZBPE Beijing FIR
• ZGZU Guangzhou FIR
• ZHWH Wuhan FIR
• ZJSA Sanya FIR
• ZLHW Lanzhou FIR
• ZPKM Kunming FIR
• ZSHA Shanghai FIR
• ZWUQ Urumqi FIR
• ZYSH Shenyang FIR

Civil Aviation Department:

• VHHK Hong Kong FIR

Civil Aviation Administration, MOTC:

• RCAA Taipei FIR

In this article, I’ll only talk about how to fly in mainland space because flying in Hong Kong and Taiwan is basically the same as flying in most of the other airspaces (they are not completely the same but there’s also not too much difference). And by “mainland space”, it means ZBPE, ZGZU, ZHWH, ZJSA (intra-island sector), ZLHW, ZPKM, ZSHA, ZWUQ, and ZYSH.

China RVSM

I assume you already know what exactly the RVSM is, if you don’t, check this link .

In China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Tajikistan (some airspaces in Russia will also use metric units on some occasions, but they mainly use imperial units), the altitude unit is “meter”. Of course, you can’t directly convert them, because if the ATC asks you to climb and maintain 9,800 meters (about 32,152.231 feet), you are not likely to set your autopilot altitude to 32,152 feet, not to mention that 0.231 feet. Therefore there’s a convert table made by CAAC, and it’s the standard in Annex 2 to the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation, which means you can use the same table when flying in other metric-unit-use airspaces. The table is shown below, and remember to follow “Odd East, Even West” rule.

Special cases

If you used the “Beijing-Guangzhou Air Corridor”, that is airways A461, W37, and W45, the altitude restriction is:

• A461

Odd North, Even South.

• W37 & W45

They are southbound one-way airways; they simply use even altitude.

“If I can’t adjust the altitude in 100-foot increments?”

Though newer MD-11s are able to set altitude in meters, on the older ones, once your AP altitude is above 10,000 ft, you can only adjust the altitude in 500-foot increments. Therefore, UPS has designed a procedure for this situation:

• Climb to 8900m (FL291)

1. Use Level Change Mode or V/S Mode to climb to 29,000ft.
2. Use V/S Mode to climb at the rate of 500ft/min, and select the ALT HOLD function before passing 29,100ft.
3. Set your cruising altitude to FL291 on the F-PLN INIT page on your FMCS, and then press PROF on FCP. FCP might not indicate 29,100ft but numbers like 29,150ft, and 29,097ft are very close to 29,100ft, and that is normal.

And vice versa, descending is the same.

To be continued…