Team members of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force's Bayi (August 1st) Aerobatic Team have demonstrated their amazing flying skills, strong determination and extraordinary resilience gained through countless training and coordination at the just-concluded 15th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition.
For the six-day event held in south China's coastal city of Zhuhai, the Bayi Aerobatic Team sent a 13-member team and six J-10C performance aircraft at the airshow, with astonishing maneuvers, including the sword looping, where one plane circling over other five planes for three times, wowing every visitor.
Li Bin, who joined the Bayi Aerobatic Team in 2009 and now served as the team captain, said each aerial stunt is carefully choreographed and coordinated among team members, leaving enough room for the pilot while bringing out the best performance of the aircraft and the excellent skills of the pilot.
"The deviation I allow is probably one or two degrees, and it is done in one shot. How can we ensure safety during the aerobatic performance? We must leave room for the pilots when designing the action, because we are a performance team, and luck will not work," said Li.
From the Moscow airshow in 2013 to the later events in Malaysia, Thailand, and the UAE, the mentality of the formation pilots has gradually matured.
What impressed Li the most was at the beginning of 2024, when seven J-10 performance aircraft took off from an airport in northwest China and headed for Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh that is around 4,000 kilometers away, and carried out the first aerial refueling in the history of the flight demonstration team on the way.
"It was our first time to refuel in the air. As our tanker aircraft is becoming more and more advanced, we will travel farther and farther. There is no problem with refueling technology. We design the course and the altitude layer. During the flight, our aircraft and tanker will coordinate to determine the fuel distribution plan, ensuring that the tanker is the lightest, and when the tanker supplies fuel to each plane. We must avoid situations where the tanker is overly heavy and others are too light, as well as those where the tanker is too light and others are too heavy," said Li.
With the transformation and development of the PLA Air Force, the mission of the Bayi team has long surpassed being a platform for elite flight personnel to showcase their skills, but a multiplier for improving combat effectiveness, according to Li.
"So this time, we are also practicing the requirement put forward by President Xi Jinping that we should always be on high alert and maintain combat readiness. We have been preparing for actual combats all the time. The core ability of our performance team is acting, and the secondary ability is moving. Therefore, we are practicing night flight preparations, actual combat aerial refueling, and perform other tasks all the time, so as to meet the requirement of being ready for combat at all times and being able to fight at any time," said Li.
He Xiaoli, a fighter pilot who transformed into a member of the performance team in 2013 and became the deputy captain of the first squadron through excellent efforts, also made a lot of sacrifices and hoped to become a role model in the eyes of her child.
"I think that for me, my biggest vulnerability is probably from my child. As a mother, I deeply value my current career and find great joy in it, and I have been working hard to make myself better by constant learning and challenging myself, so as to a better pilot, a more qualified and better soldier. I want to be the role model of my child. When he talks about me with others, especially when he sees the performance of the Bayi Aerobatic Team on TV, sees some of his mother's wonderful performances, he will be proud of his mother," said He.
The flight demonstration team is the like the business card of the Air Force, and every member of the team strives for excellence at all times, according to Li.
"If we want to achieve the first-class status, we must pursue excellence and perfection. Because only by setting high standards can we better present the style that our performance team should have and serve as a window of the PLA Air Force and a business card of the military," said Li.
Persistent pursuit of excellence creates brilliance of Bayi Aerobatic Team at Zhuhai airshow
