Flight interception traps (FITs) composed of a trapping screen (plastic mesh, a transparent PVC plastic sheet or plexiglass) and an insect collecting container, are effective for trapping flying insects. Such traps have recently begun to play an important role in insect collecting in foreign countries. However, there has yet been no published report on their use and effectiveness in China. In this paper, based on the recommendations of collaborators from the U.K., the relevant literature and our practical experience of FIT equipment in the field, we provide a complete set of instructions for assembling and using FITs, and evaluate their effectiveness for sampling the major insect groups, including the Hymenoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, Lepidoptera and Trichoptera. The results indicate that FITs performed reasonably well in trapping insects from the above orders. An average of 332 individual insects were captured daily by each FIT, including 126 Hymenoptera, 101 Coleoptera, 87 Diptera, 10 Lepidoptera, 3 Trichoptera and 5 other insect taxa. The correlation between various factors and the effectiveness of FITs was analyzed, and suggestions for future directions for their application and improvement provided. In addition, we compared the effectiveness of FIT and Malaise Traps (MTs) deployed at the same time and location. The results indicate that FIT are superior to MT’s and that these two kinds of traps tend to collect different proportions of different insect taxa; FIT tended to capture more Hymenoptera, then Coleoptera, whereas MTs captured more Diptera followed then Hymenoptera.