Beijing airport Photo: VCG

China's air passenger travel set records in July, official data showed on Tuesday, boosted by soaring summer demand as civil aviation market recovered quickly post-pandemic.

Total transportation turnover reached 11.37 billion ton-kilometers in July, a year-on-year increase of 67.1 percent, data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said.

Transportation turnover has rebounded for eight consecutive months, exceeding the level of the same period in 2019 before the COVID-19 outbreak. 

Passenger trips rose 83.7 percent year-on-year to 62.428 million, which grew 5.3 percent over the same period in 2019 to make a new record in monthly air passenger trips in the country, the CAAC said. 

The agency attributed the rapid growth to strong demand for summer travel, with airlines gearing up to offer more routes.

China Eastern Airlines said that it carried more than 370,000 passengers per day since July 1. Daily flights hit 2,795 on July 24, a record high for this year. China Eastern predicted that volume will keep rising. 

And, Chinese airports have been kept busy. Sanya Phoenix International Airport said it served 1.798 million passengers in July, up 18.3 percent year-on-year. The July figure was the highest since the airport was put into operation in 1994. 

Beijing Capital International Airport recorded steady flights growth in recent months. Passenger flows surpassed 5 million trips in July. On August 6, the airport processed 200,000 passengers, the highest since February 2020. 

The rapid recovery of passenger traffic in China is good news for civil aviation and the overall economy, as domestic consumption is an important force driving economic growth, Zheng Hongfeng, CEO of industry information provider VariFlight, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The CAAC predicted in June that an average of 13,600 domestic passenger flights will operate each day during the summer travel peak, up 11 percent from 2019 and a total of 1.83 million domestic passengers will be carried, up 7 percent.

Data from travel platform Qunar.com sent to the Global Times showed that, since July, air ticket bookings for popular destinations have increased by 40 percent from 2019, and hotel bookings have increased by 1.4 times.

However, Zheng noted that it's necessary to keep a close watch on the recovery of China's international flights.

Compared with domestic tourism revival, international passenger transport market is still lagging behind, with merely 3.353 million passenger trips seen in July.

Market watchers said that overseas travel will see further growth as the Ministry of Culture and Tourism recently announced the resumption of a third batch of group tours to 78 destinations including the US, Japan, Australia and India. 

A report by Chinese online travel platform Trip.com said that outbound trips during the National Day holidays in early October are the most searched options, with Japan, Australia and New Zealand among the most popular destinations.