Tourists visit the Qingming Bridge historical community in Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu Province, May 1, 2023. China is witnessing a travel boom during this year's five-day May Day holiday. (Photo by Huan Yueliang/Xinhua)

Chinese airlines are gearing up to increase flights for the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year, as the 40-day travel peak which starts on Friday, is believed to be another important window to showcase the country's economic vitality.

Air China said on Tuesday that it plans to arrange 67,691 flights during the 40-day travel peak with an average of 1,693 flights per day, increasing by 32 percent compared with 2019 and 40.6 percent compared with 2023. 

Air China said it will increase key capacity input of travel cities such as Haikou, Sanya in South China's Hainan Province and Harbin in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. 

For overseas markets, Air China said it will add 111 routes with an average of 187 flights per day. 

The airlines will also increase capacity for cities in Hong Kong, Macao, the Taiwan island and Southeast Asia, such as the number of flights on routes such as Beijing to Phuket and Wuhan to Macao will increase by 650 percent year-on-year in 2023.

The daily overseas flights during this year's Chunyun or Spring Festival travel rush lasting till March 5 will rise to 187, recovering to 97 percent of 2019 levels, and the destinations along the Belt and Road Initiative are expected to recover 84 percent of levels seen in 2019, Air China said. 

Photo: Courtesy of Air China

The capacity expansion comes amid the background as Chinese aviation industry is in a fast recovery this year, such as the travel demand has hit a record high in the past three years in the May Day holidays, followed by a travel peak during  the Summer holidays and National Day holidays.

Chinese experts said that the travel peak is a vivid example for the rising domestic demand, as data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed China's total retail sales of consumer goods reached 47.15 trillion yuan ($6.55 trillion) in 2023, an increase of 7.2 percent year-on-year.

China is expected to record 9 billion passenger trips during the annual Spring Festival travel rush, the Ministry of Transport said last week. 

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) predicted that the total number of passengers via air could hit 80 million in the 40-day travel rush or two million per day on average, expecting to hit a record.

Other airlines also release their capacity arrangements for coming travel rush. China Eastern Airlines said that it will increase capacity by 39 percent, and it will deploy wide-body aircraft for hot domestic routes such as Chengdu, Sanya, Harbin, and Shenyang.

China Southern Airlines plans to operate around 108,000 domestic flights, and wide-body aircraft will also be arranged to meet rising demand, the carrier said. 


Global Times