Collecting Chinese Airliners in 400 Scale
For an Englishman, albeit one who lived in New Zealand for 16 years, collecting Chinese airlines makes me something of an outlier in 400 scale collecting. I don't know anybody outside of China who collects Chinese models in the amounts I do and rarely see photos of people's Chinese fleets on Western forums or groups. Nonetheless, I find it to be a really interesting area in which to expand my collection and as of May 2024 it amounts to 639 models in total making it my second biggest geographical collection area (after the USA with 937 models) and one that amounts to 21% of my collection.
WHY CHINA?
This is a question I get asked from time to time but there are really many reasons as to why I have found China to be a great collection focus. These include:
- From a Western perspective China as a nation is so exotic and foreign, plus its massive and incredibly diverse geographically, ethnically and historically. Reading about the cities and culture which the airline aspects leads to is always interesting while Europe and the US are so familiar to me.
- From an aviation perspective I love the US regulated era and 80s/90s but nowadays the market is mature and rather boring. There's a small number of airlines and most markets are fulfilled already. Europe is the same, plus its filled with tacky LCCs. In China, like other growing markets, there is a massive diversity of airlines and insane growth in the system. It is far more interesting.
- New airlines, and whole airports, are popping up regularly. There are 160 cities with over a million inhabitants and provinces with populations the size of Canada, Spain, Turkey, France etc. So, with increasing wealth there's going to be lots of new aircraft and airlines.
- Chinese airlines often have great liveries. The majors can be conservative, which means there are still some nice cheatlines about, but they also embrace the capability of modern tech to make truly wonderful new special schemes, more often than not based upon events or destinations rather than Pokemon and popstars!
- Since all 400 scale models are made in China there is a good diversity of Chinese airliners being made. With such a large domestic market the demand means most Chinese models do get made eventually.
- Running Yesterday's Airlines I need a portion of my collection which is modern so I have a reason to get A350s, 787s etc. China fulfils that need (although I admit my modern collection criteria has expanded a little in recent times).
THE EARLY COLLECTION HISTORY
I started collecting Chinese airlines December 2014 and it was the first area of modern aircraft in the collection. The Chinese fleet grew from a handful of models to nearly one hundred in only 10 months. Back then my house had a basement room and the models were stored in open shelves. The first four photos below cover from December 2014 until May 2015:
By July a sixth shelf had been added and following my return from a trip to England, and the arrival of multiple boxes of new models from Waffle Collectibles, I 'had' to add a seventh shelf. The below photos cover July-October 2015.
As you can see the collection even back then was organised by airline groupings:
- Shelf 1: Air China & CAAC
- Shelf 2: The smaller CAAC offspring (China Southwest, Northwest, Xinjiang & China United) plus newest China Eastern
- Shelf 3: China Eastern
- Shelf 4: China Southern
- Shelf 5: Xiamen Airlines, Shanghai Airlines & Sichuan Airlines
- Shelf 6: Startups and Cargo
- Shelf 7: HNA Group (Hainan Airlines and its affiliated airlines)
THE CURRENT FLEET
Since 2015 the fleet has grown massively and been moved between two houses and across to the other side of the world. It is still organised by airline groupings but is now spread across 4 cabinets. The major airline groupings are organised as follows:
