Nine minutes is all it takes for a bag of blood to travel from the Anyang Central Blood Station in Henan Province to a hospital operating room in the city proper. Over the same route, an ambulance would need 35 minutes under normal traffic conditions.

This aerial corridor is not the result of a one-off emergency drill, but rather a routine flight path for low-altitude medical delivery in Anyang. As the low-altitude economy moves from concept to application, Anyang has already turned a batch of use cases into everyday operations.

At present, Anyang has established 33 drone application scenarios, 12 of which have been certified by the Civil Aviation Administration of China. From government inspections to mountainous logistics, from police operations to medical delivery, these scenarios share a common trait: they have frequency, data, and clearly defined users. The input-output logic of core scenarios is now basically clear.

From Individual Procurement to Unified Flight Operations

Environmental monitoring, heritage site inspections, traffic enforcement, water conservancy patrols, and scenic area surveillance represent the earliest and largest category of low-altitude scenarios in Anyang. In the past, government departments typically each purchased their own drones, trained their own pilots, and conducted their own flights, with different departments building separate systems.

Staff at the Anyang Low-Altitude Economy Investment Group calculated the costs: equipment, pilots, and maintenance each required their own set of resources, and when all expenses were added up, the total investment scale was enormous.

Anyang's approach was centralization. The low-altitude government command and dispatch platform uniformly manages 21 automated hangars, covering Anyang's main urban area and several surrounding counties and districts. Various bureaus submit flight requests, the platform coordinates flight routes in a unified manner, and a single flight can simultaneously collect data for multiple departments. Tasks such as environmental monitoring, heritage site inspections, traffic enforcement, water conservancy patrols, and scenic area surveillance are integrated into the same dispatch network.

Yunhuan Wanglian, which provides technical support, was established with joint investment from China Unicom and the Anyang municipal government, focusing on the research, development, and operation of low-altitude intelligent network management and control platforms. The company's head demonstrated a complete closed-loop handling process: during routine inspections, a drone discovers straw burning; AI automatically identifies it, automatically takes photos, and automatically uploads the data; the platform dispatches the event to the corresponding department based on its type; and after on-site handling, staff transmit the results back.

This AI recognition capability has now been extended to more than 60 scenarios, covering common problems in daily urban management such as illegal street vending and river discharge violations. It is understood that to date, government flights in Anyang have exceeded 20,000 sorties. From decentralized procurement to unified dispatch, the way government drones are used is undergoing a transformation.

The Livelihood Depth Within the Scenarios

Government flights demonstrate centralization, while mountainous logistics and medical delivery verify the most direct livelihood benefits of low-altitude scenarios.

In Shibanyan Town, Linzhou City, 17 administrative villages are scattered among the peaks of the Taihang Mountains. Shangping Village, at an altitude of over 1,100 meters, takes 50 minutes to reach by car from the town center. Moreover, mountain roads are sometimes interrupted by rain, snow, or landslides, making logistics delivery unstable.

Anyang Postal Company established a main station at the Shibanyan Town postal branch and set up receiving stations in each administrative village, opening 12 drone postal routes with one to two scheduled flights per day, covering more than 4,000 villagers. From the town to Shangping Village, items can be delivered in just 7 minutes.

Seven minutes versus 50 minutes — the significance of this postal route is not a one-time demonstration flight in front of news cameras, but a fixed route that takes off and lands on schedule every day. After the drone postal routes were opened, residents in mountainous areas gained a more stable aerial channel for express deliveries, medicines, and daily necessities, which can still be delivered even during rain, snow, or when roads are blocked. Media outlets have produced special reports on this route, calling it one of the solutions to the difficulty of delivering logistics to mountain areas.

The livelihood account for medical delivery is even more direct. The Anyang Central Blood Station led the opening of blood delivery routes connecting medical institutions such as the New People's Hospital and the Cancer Hospital in the city proper. Blood products are extremely time-sensitive, and compressing a 35-minute drive to 9 minutes makes the difference between timely treatment and dangerous delay for emergency care. This project won the GSMA Global Mobile Award for Best Mobile Smart City Innovation in 2025.

Police aviation represents another dimension of Anyang's low-altitude scenarios: an extreme test of reliability. Twenty automated police hangars in the main urban area form a patrol system that flies immediately upon receiving an alert. Drones are deployed in tasks such as event security, drug eradication, and traffic management. Poppy monitoring cameras and AI recognition systems developed in cooperation with the Blue Sky Laboratory have been deployed in public security systems in multiple locations. Products that can enter actual police operations have already passed a rigorous round of reliability screening.

The Behind-the-Scenes Infrastructure for Low-Altitude Scenarios

Low-altitude scenarios do not emerge out of thin air. Every drone that takes off requires support from communications, testing, talent, and other conditions.

In terms of communications, the operation of the low-altitude government command and dispatch platform relies on the low-altitude communication network built in Anyang. The operator, Yunhuan Wanglian, focuses on building the low-altitude intelligent network platform, providing stable communication guarantees for drones flying in the air.

Testing is another pillar. The Henan Provincial Drone Quality Inspection Center is the first provincial-level drone quality inspection center in China, with 15 professional laboratories and a 50,000-square-meter outdoor testing ground. Its testing parameters have expanded from 47 items initially to 308 items, with cumulative testing of more than 500 drone sorties, covering 19 provinces and cities. Drone companies can complete testing from components to finished products locally, without having to travel far.

Talent is equally critical. The Taihang Low-Altitude Space Application Vocational Training School has trained more than 5,000 certified pilots; the Quanfeng system has trained over 50,000 professional pilots; and local institutions have established more than 20 aviation-related majors. Behind every automated hangar and every fixed route, there must be people to monitor, maintain, and dispatch. Anyang's pilot supply is the key to ensuring these scenarios can operate long-term rather than being one-off flights.

Communications, testing, and talent are several important pillars supporting the operation of Anyang's low-altitude scenarios. These scenarios are not driven by subsidies, but rather grow gradually from actual demand after the necessary facilities are laid and capabilities are built. Government flights have smoothed out the platform, logistics routes have clarified the costs, and medical delivery has proven the timeliness. The data, standards, and experience accumulated in each scenario are paving the way for the next one.

The most frequently asked question about the low-altitude economy is "what can it do?" Anyang's answer is: it can deliver packages up mountains, deliver blood into operating rooms, and enable a single flight to serve multiple government departments simultaneously. None of these things seem significant on their own, but each one has genuine utility. For a third- or fourth-tier city developing the low-altitude economy, there is no need to rush into telling a grand story. Making a few specific scenarios solid is itself the most powerful answer.