China's civil aviation agency said it will pilot direct luggage transfer services at 29 airports, including two in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in a bid to better serve customers. 

The move comes in response to a rising travel demand, Jin Junhao, an official from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said on Thursday. 

He said that these airports can cooperate with each other, with airlines and third parties, and that airlines could also cooperate with each other to provide services by means such as code sharing.  

However, the official warned that there are still obstacles ahead, as the procedure will be very complicated. 

Passengers are currently unable to enjoy direct transfers of luggage in any country, unless their tickets are issued from airlines of the same alliance, or the airlines have a code-sharing partnership, according to the official.

He also said that the investment resources of transit airports are insufficient, and some airlines worry that the new service will weaken their own network resources and bring a loss of customers, and that there is a lack of a unified information system to support data sharing. 

The CAAC said that the coverage rate of direct routes between international hubs and regional airports is 25.6 percent, and that the coverage rate of direct routes between regional airports is only 0.6 percent.

China had a total of 235 airports by the end of last year, up six from the previous year. 

More airlines are accelerating their advances into the digital era, with major players sending clear signals of new opportunities worldwide.

China Southern Airlines last month launched its e-tags on flights from Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, and it is the first domestic carrier to provide such services. 

The move was mirrored by China Eastern Airlines, which released its first self-made electronic baggage tag as well.

The CAAC will plow ahead this year to promote digital systems, and China's civil aviation authorities will push forward integration of the civil aviation sector with new technologies such as facial recognition, automatic vending and luggage check-in, and intelligent inquiry services, Xinhua reported earlier. 

The CAAC will also encourage the integration of new artificial intelligence and biological feature recognition technologies in its security operations, and it will promote in-flight connectivity.

The regulator said that Beijing Daxing International Airport will adopt multiple new technologies, such as self check-in, self baggage check-in and facial recognition in security checks to make it smarter and more efficient. 

It is expected that the self check-in facilities will serve roughly 86 percent of its passengers, and the self baggage check-in roughly 76 percent, according to the CAAC.