A plane of China Eastern Airlines Photo: IC

Chinese domestic airlines see flights doubled over the Qingming Festival holiday, industry data showed, a strong sign to show the industry's recovery after years' dark time. 

Data from industry information provider VariFlight showed on Tuesday that, during the three-day holidays from Saturday to Monday, the number of domestic passenger flights was 34,700 in total, increasingly two-fold compared with the same period last year, and up about 13 percent over the same period in 2019.

In terms of the passenger trips, the total number of passengers on domestic routes was 4.76 million from Saturday to Monday, an increase of 2.4 times over the same period in 2020, and a total of 6.85 million seats were input during that period, an increase of 2.1 times over the same period in 2020, data showed. 

The top three airports with planned flights are Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, Beijing Capital International Airport and Kunming Changshui International Airport. 

The most popular route is Beijing-Shanghai, with the most searched destinations being Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu.

The data is also in line with flights numbers released by carriers for the season starting from March 28, as some airlines have more than 20 percent more domestic flights than in 2019.

Starting from March 28, Chinese airlines began the summer and autumn seasons, and official data showed that there will be 54 new routes added. It is widely believed that the coming holidays will see strong competition in the battle for recovery following the epidemic.

Chinese airlines have seen strong performance since March. 

VariFlight data showed that in March, the average daily flight volume of domestic market was 12,451, which is about 2.5 times the level of the same period in 2020, and fully recovered to the level of the same period in 2019 before the epidemic.

The travel data is also echoed by bookings. 

Online travel platform qunar.com data said air tickets and hotel bookings during the Qingming Festival have increased significantly compared with 2019. Among them, air ticket bookings came in at 1.4 times in the same period in 2019, and hotel bookings reached 1.5 times in 2019.

According to the data of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 102 million domestic trips were made during the festival, an increase of 144.6 percent year-on-year and a recovery to 94.5 percent of the same period before the COVID-19 epidemic. 

Domestic tourism revenue reached 27.168 billion yuan ($4.15 billion), up 228.9 percent year on year, and recovered to 56.7 percent in the same period before the epidemic.