Earticle

The emergence of the low-altitude economy has promoted the rapid expansion of innovative sectors, including unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) logistics, Urban Air Mobility (UAM), and low-altitude tourism. This growth has generated a critical and urgent demand for the allocation of designated low-altitude airspace above terrestrial surfaces. However, the traditional real right law system, which is centered on land rights and adheres to the principle of “cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad coelum et ad inferos” (whoever owns the land owns it up to the heavens and down to the depths), struggles to accommodate and regulate the independent, stratified utilization of three-dimensional space above land-particularly low-altitude airspace. Against this background, it becomes both feasible and necessary to deconstruct the traditional conception of land rights and to justify the recognition of specific low-altitude airspace as an independent object of real rights in the form of a usufructuary right to low-altitude airspace. Within the framework of the Book on Real Rights of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China, it is essential to examine the doctrinal structure and regulatory mechanisms of such a right to promote and ensure the safe and orderly development of the low-altitude economy.