Xiamen native awarded for role in reform and opening-up

Wu Rongnan, general manager of Xiamen Airlines, is absent from the gathering to mark the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up due to his poor health and watches the live broadcast from his home in Xiamen, Fujian province. [Photo/chinanews.com]

Wu Rongnan, general manager of Xiamen Airlines, has been rewarded for his great contributions to China's reform and opening-up over the past four decades.

In order to mark the 40th anniversary of the great move, Wu, together with 99 other Chinese people from different walks of life, received an award at a gathering held in Beijing on Dec 18.

Wu has been engaged in the civil aviation industry since has was 19 years old, the age at which he took the post of director of the flight department at Guangzhou administration bureau, one of the youngest directors in China's civil aviation industry.

Twenty five years later, the Xiamen native was made general manager of the newly-founded Xiamen Airlines.

At the beginning of his term, the airlines had no land, no factory, no aircraft, and no flight routes.

Wu said at that time they did their work in open air, leased aircraft from China's civil aviation administration and established maintenance depots under the eaves.

The same year he took the post, Xiamen Airlines launched its maiden flight. The following year it turned a profit. Since then, the company has gained profits each year, which is a rarity for China's transportation enterprises, especially civil aviation.

Wu has also built a bridge for exchanges between Fujian and Taiwan, becoming a cross-Straits flight witness, participant and enabler.

As early as the 1990s, Wu put cross-Straits flights into his fleet expansion plan.

During the Spring Festival in 2005, Xiamen Airlines' Boeing 757, one of the participants of flights between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, finished its first charted Guangzhou-Taipei round trip.

Since 2008, when the "three exchanges" between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan was launched, Xiamen Airlines has offered regular cross-Straits transport.

The "three exchanges" refer to the exchange of mail, trade, air and shipping services; the opening of postal, aviation and navigational services, and commercial interflow.

Even though Wu has been retired for many years, he still cares about the company’s development and to introduce a Boeing 787 Dreamliner to the fleet was his lifelong dream. In 2014, the first Boeing 787 was introduced to Xiamen Airlines and Wu was invited to experience its maiden flight.