A delivery of one bag of blood made the journey from the Central Blood Station of Anyang, Henan Province, to the operating room of a city hospital in just nine minutes. The same route would typically take an ambulance 35 minutes under normal traffic conditions. This aerial corridor is not the result of a one-off emergency drill; it is now a routine flight path for low-altitude medical deliveries in Anyang. As the low-altitude economy transitions from concept to practical application, Anyang has successfully turned a batch of use cases into everyday operations. Currently, the city has established 33 drone application scenarios, 12 of which have been officially certified by the Civil Aviation Administration of China. From government inspections to logistics in mountainous regions, and from police operations to medical deliveries, these scenarios share common traits: they operate with regular frequency, generate valuable data, serve specific users, and their core input-output logic has become fundamentally viable.

Government-related flights, covering tasks such as environmental monitoring, cultural relic inspections, traffic enforcement, water conservancy surveillance, and scenic area patrols, represent the earliest and most extensive segment of Anyang's low-altitude applications. In the past, government departments would procure, train for, and operate their own drones, leading to a fragmented system with each agency building its own infrastructure. Staff at the Anyang Low-Altitude Economy Investment Group have calculated that when you multiply the costs of equipment, pilots, and maintenance across all departments, the total investment becomes enormous. Anyang's solution is centralization. A unified command and dispatch platform now manages 21 automated drone hangars, providing coverage over the main urban area and multiple surrounding counties. When various municipal bureaus submit flight requests, the platform consolidates and schedules routes, enabling a single flight to gather data for multiple departments simultaneously. Tasks ranging from environmental monitoring to cultural relic inspection, traffic enforcement, water conservancy, and scenic area patrols are integrated into a single dispatch network. The technical backbone is provided by Yunhu Wanglian, a joint venture established by China Unicom and the Anyang municipal government, which focuses on the research, development, and operation of a low-altitude intelligent network management and control platform. The company's head demonstrated a complete closed-loop process to reporters: a drone on routine patrol detects the burning of crop residue; AI automatically recognizes, photographs, and uploads the information; the platform then assigns the event to the relevant department based on its type; and field staff handle the situation and report the results back. This AI recognition capability has expanded to cover over 60 scenarios, addressing common urban management issues such as illegal street occupation and river pollution. To date, Anyang's government-related drone flights have surpassed 20,000 sorties. The transition from decentralized procurement to unified scheduling marks a significant shift in how government drones are utilized.

Government flights showcase the benefits of consolidation, while logistics in mountain areas and medical deliveries validate the most direct improvements to people's livelihoods that low-altitude scenarios can offer. In Shibanyan Town, Linzhou City, 17 administrative villages are scattered among the peaks of the Taihang Mountains. For Shangping Village, situated at an altitude of over 1,100 meters, a drive from the town center takes 50 minutes. Furthermore, mountain roads are frequently disrupted by rain, snow, and landslides, making delivery services unreliable. Anyang Post has established a main hub at the postal branch in Shibanyan Town and set up receiving stations in various administrative villages, launching 12 scheduled drone mail routes. With one to two flights operating daily, these routes now serve over 4,000 villagers. A package from town to Shangping Village now arrives in just seven minutes. Comparing seven minutes to 50, the significance of this mail route is that it isn't a one-time demonstration for the cameras; it is a fixed flight path that takes off and lands on schedule every day. Since the drone mail routes began, residents in mountainous areas have gained a more stable aerial channel for receiving express deliveries, medicine, and daily necessities, which remains operational even during bad weather or when roads are blocked. Media have reported extensively on this route, highlighting it as a solution to the challenges of delivering logistics to mountainous regions. The ledger for medical deliveries is even more direct. The Central Blood Station of Anyang City has spearheaded the establishment of blood delivery routes connecting it to major hospitals in the urban area, such as the New People's Hospital and the Tumor Hospital. Blood products are extremely time-sensitive; compressing a 35-minute ambulance ride into a 9-minute drone flight can be the difference between "in time" and "too late" for emergency care. This project received the "Best Mobile Innovation for Smart Cities" award at the 2025 Global Mobile Awards. Police aviation represents another facet of Anyang's low-altitude ecosystem: it serves as an extreme test of reliability. A network of 20 automated police hangars in the main urban area forms a patrol and response system capable of launching drones immediately upon receiving an alert. These drones are deployed for tasks including event security, the eradication of illegally planted crops, and traffic management. A poppy detection camera and AI recognition system, developed in collaboration with the Blue Sky Laboratory, has been adopted by police departments in several regions. Any product that can withstand the rigors of actual police operations has already passed a stringent filter for reliability.

Low-altitude scenarios do not appear out of thin air; every drone flight depends on supporting infrastructure in communication, inspection, and human talent. For communications, the low-altitude government command and dispatch platform runs on a dedicated low-altitude communication network that Anyang has built. The operator, Yunhu Wanglian, is dedicated to constructing this intelligent network platform to ensure stable communication for drones in flight. Inspection is another pillar of support. The Henan Provincial Drone Quality Inspection Center is the first provincial-level drone quality inspection center in China. It houses 15 specialized laboratories and a 50,000-square-meter outdoor testing field. Its testing parameters have expanded from an initial 47 items to 308, it has inspected over 500 drones to date, and its services now cover 19 provinces and cities. Drone companies can now complete inspections from individual parts to the entire aircraft locally, avoiding the need to seek services far away. Talent is equally critical. The Taihang Low-Altitude Space Application Vocational Training School has trained over 5,000 certified pilots, while the Quanfeng system has cultivated over 50,000 professional drone operators. Local colleges and universities offer more than 20 aviation-related programs. Every automated hangar and every fixed flight route requires personnel for oversight, maintenance, and scheduling. Anyang's supply of trained pilots is the key factor that allows these applications to operate sustainably on a long-term basis, rather than being fleeting one-off exercises. Communication, inspection, and talent are the crucial pillars that enable Anyang's low-altitude applications to function effectively. These scenarios are not driven by subsidies; rather, they emerge organically from real-world demand after the necessary infrastructure and capabilities have been laid down. Government flights have refined the operational platform, logistics routes have clarified their cost structures, and medical deliveries have proven their time-saving benefits. The data, standards, and experience accumulated by each application pave 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 clear: it can deliver packages up the mountain, transport blood to the operating room, and allow a single flight to serve the needs of multiple government agencies. Individually, these tasks may seem small, but each one provides tangible value. A tier-3 or tier-4 city venturing into the low-altitude economy need not rush to tell a grand, sweeping narrative. Mastering a few concrete, practical applications with excellence is, in itself, the most powerful response.