Published : 2025-10-06
On 6 October 2000, highly skilled and daring Chinese stunt pilots successfully flew through the arch of "Taihu Bridge No. 1", the first bridge over China's largest inland lake, adding a new and magnificent chapter to the history of world aviation sports.
At 3:29 p.m. that afternoon, the 38-year-old Yang Shangfeng (楊尚峰) from the Guangxi Aviation Sports School and co-pilot the 39-year-old Jin Liang (金亮), from the Xinjiang Aviation Association were the first to fly a domestically-produced Haiyan 650B light aircraft to the front of the bridge.
They circled twice above the bridge, then aligned with the main arch and flew through perfectly in one go, leaving a beautiful trail of coloured smoke under the bridge.
The main arch of "Taihu Bridge No. 1", located within Wuxian County, Suzhou City, has a clear width of 34.91 metres and a clear height of less than 6 metres.
However, the wingspan of the Haiyan 650B aircraft is 14.95 metres and its height is 2.65 metres, making it considerably difficult to pilot this aircraft through the arch. Consequently, at the moment Yang Shangfeng and Jin Liang successfully flew through the arch, the more than 100,000 spectators at the scene all burst into cheers.
Following them in succession were pilot Zhao Jinguang (趙金光) from the Baoding Aviation Sports School in Hebei and pilot Wang Jian'an (王建安) from the Datong Aviation Training Base in Shanxi, who successfully flew through the arch to a round of applause, piloting a domestically-produced Mifeng-3C and an AD-100T aircraft respectively.
At 3:44 p.m., pilot Li Weiguo (李衛國) from the Beijing Keyuan Aircraft Company and pilot Lin Hong (林宏) from the Beijing Light Cavalry Flying Club, each piloting an AD-200 aircraft, approached the bridge flying in a formation of the Chinese character "二" (means "two") .
As Li Weiguo's lead aircraft flew through the main arch, Lin Hong's wingman aircraft also successfully passed through the arch to its left, an arch with a clear width of only 26.75 metres.
Their spectacular performance brought the entire stunt flying performance of passing through the Taihu Bridge arches to a perfect conclusion, and left the spectators on site almost delirious with excitement.
