Photo: Xinhua

China's transport industry is poised to see tens of billions of yuan in losses if the coronavirus epidemic extends into more months, putting big pressure on the operators' performance, including aviation carriers. 

The loss for Chinese air carriers may hit 37 billion yuan ($5.29 billion) in February and 35 billion yuan in March, and the loss could extend to nearly 100 billion yuan in total if the virus lasts into May, a report from VariFlight, one of China's air-data services firms said.

The report said that before the outbreak the load factor in the domestic market was about 80 percent, but then it slid to below 60 percent or even 40 percent during the epidemic, making income decline sharply. 

"Reading from the data, the decline in capacity of international routes for Chinese carriers has exceeded that of Chinese mainland routes, and there is no sign of a rebound," said Qiu Lianzhong, visiting professor at the China Civil Aviation Management Institute of China and the author of the report.

Work in China has been suspended for some time, and now is just on the way back to normal. Zhang Wu'an, spokesperson of low-budget Spring Airlines, told the Global Times that there are only two routes on services each from China to South Korea and Japan, compared with more than 10 routes before the virus.

Although the carrier will not cancel more routes in the coming weeks, the load factor is about 50 percent on average for the four routes flying to the two countries, Zhang said. 

Currently, Spring Airlines flies from Shanghai to Seoul and Jeju in South Korea, Shanghai to Tokyo and Osaka in Japan. Further, carriers are making discounts on tickets in a bid to avoid suspending flights.

The Global Times found that the fare for Tuesday from Beijing to Shanghai on online travel agency Ctrip.com was merely 300 yuan ($42), compared with more than 1,000 yuan in the past. 

The fare from Shenzhen to Chengdu flying with China Southern Airlines was 70 yuan on Tuesday, 97 percent off the normal economy price, the website showed.

The aviation industry is only part of the story for China's transport sector.

Data from China Railway showed that on February 16, only 967,000 people traveled by railway, a year-on-year decrease of 89.3 percent. 

Before the outbreak, the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train operated 44 pairs of trains daily. Due to the significant reduction in passenger flow, only 10 pairs of high-speed trains ran between Beijing and Shanghai on February 18. 

"The large suspension caused by the epidemic will hurt railway passenger transport further, and a loss by China Railway in 2020 will be unavoidable," a report posted on news portal caixin.com showed, citing Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University.

"The weak passenger flow will shortcut the revenues of Chinese railways," Zhao told Global Times on Monday.

A bond salesman surnamed Gao from China Securities usually spends four days out of Beijing a week, as his footprint goes around China, and he is also a platinum card member of Air China. But he has now stopped business trips for one month.

"We cannot have face-to-face talks with our customers, leaving a lot of work hanging in the air, and the efficiency is very low," he said. 

"The turning point of the aviation industry is hard to predict, and the positive growth depends on if there are more business trips as the nation now has resumed work," Zheng Hongfeng, CEO of VariFlight, told the Global Times on Monday.