Wang Zheng

Wang Zheng (Chinese: 王争, English: Julie Wang; born 25 December 1972 in Chongqing, China) is an Airline Transport Pilot and Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) in West Palm Beach, Florida, where she resides. She is the first Asian woman to circumnavigate Earth in an airplane. Wang is also the first Chinese pilot to fly solo around the world and only the ninth woman ever to do so, with three Americans, three British, a French and an Australian having preceded her.

Wang's parents were professors involved in aerospace research at the Harbin Institute of Technology and Wang was constantly surrounded by engineers and aerospace academics growing up on the university campus. In 1989, Wang's brother, Dou, was selected as one of two Harbin high school students to enter the PLA Air Force but Wang's parents refused to provide the family's household identification and registration booklet, effectively withholding their permission for him to become a pilot. They similarly withheld permission for Wang to become a flight attendant for Air China, feeling it more appropriate that Wang attend university and study computer science, which she did for two years before leaving to pursue a career in advertising in Beijing.

After obtaining a degree in journalism and advertising from Xiamen University and spending fifteen years in strategic communications with global advertising agencies, Wang relocated to the United States with her husband and daughter in September 2010, obtained a driver's license and then began flying in March 2011. Her first flight was in weather so severe the flight school's instructors were amazed when she returned the following day to sign up for training. She obtained her private pilot's certificate in July 2011 and by late 2012 had become a multi-engine, instrument-rated commercial pilot. In 2013, she earned each of the three available flight instructor ratings (CFI, CFII and MEI) issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and became the first Chinese citizen to earn an FAA flight instructor certificate and hold all three flight instructor ratings. In April 2016, Wang became the first Chinese citizen to be approved by the FAA as a chief instructor for a Part 141 flight training provider.

In September 2016, Wang completed a solo circumnavigation of the globe in a single piston-engine airplane, becoming the first Chinese person to fly an airplane solo around the world. She departed westbound from Addison, Texas on August 17, 2016, and paused in California to have ferry tanks installed and obtain FAA approvals for the aircraft modifications. She departed from Merced, California on September 2, 2016, and made stops in Hawaii, the Marshall Islands, Guam, the Philippines, China, Thailand, India, the UAE, Greece, Malta, Portugal, the Azores and Newfoundland, before returning to Texas on September 19, thirty-three days later. Wang made the flight in a normally-aspirated Cirrus SR22 modified to hold extra fuel, and covered over 38,500 kilometers (21,000 nautical-miles) in 155 flying hours, over eighteen flight days, flying over or landing in 24 countries. Her longest leg was from Merced, California to Honolulu, Hawaii, covering 2,160 nautical miles in 13.8 hours. Her longest day involved the legs from Lisbon, Portugal to Santa Maria Island in the Azores and then from Santa Maria to St. Johns, Newfoundland, which required her to remain awake for 29 hours.

On November 1, 2016, at Airshow China 2016 in Zhuhai, AOPA China's President Mr. Zhang Feng presented Wang with a replica bank draft for 1,000,000 Yuan Renminbi (about $150,000) representing the 1,000,000 Yuan Renminbi prize AOPA China will award to Wang for being the first Chinese woman pilot to complete an around-the-world flight.