A plane of SF Airlines Co., Ltd. takes off at Bao'an International Airport in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, Sep 10, 2020.Photo:Xinhua

China's aviation industry is seeing a stable recovery, and transport on domestic routes has returned to its pre-epidemic level, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said on Friday.

"The operation of the civil aviation industry in the first half of the year improved steadily, and the overall recovery was in line with expectations," said Zhang Qing of the CAAC.

The air transportation industry has seen a V-shaped trend, with total transportation turnover of 46.50 billion ton-kilometers in the first half of the year, an increase of 45.4 percent year-on-year. It has recovered to 74.1 percent of the level in the same period in 2019, and the degree of recovery increased by 12.4 percentage points compared with the whole of 2020, Zhang said. 

The industry rebounded rapidly after Spring Festival. In the second quarter, the total industry transportation turnover volume recovered to 82.3 percent of the level in the same period of 2019, a sharp increase of 16.7 percentage points from the first quarter, Zhang noted. 

Zhang said that in the second quarter, industry passenger traffic has recovered to 89.0 percent of the level in the same period of 2019, a substantial increase of 25.6 percentage points from the first quarter. 

Also, the scale of passenger transportation on domestic routes was the same as in the same period of 2019 before the epidemic, Zhang said.

Global Times