China Air Passenger Volume, Fares Jump Over Labor Day Holiday to Outdo Lunar New Year Break
Chen Shanshan
DATE:  May 05 2023
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
China Air Passenger Volume, Fares Jump Over Labor Day Holiday to Outdo Lunar New Year Break China Air Passenger Volume, Fares Jump Over Labor Day Holiday to Outdo Lunar New Year Break

(Yicai Global) May 5 -- Air passenger numbers and ticket prices in China jumped over the five-day Labor Day holiday, with some airlines enjoying record single-day earnings gains, and many indicators surpassing those for the Chinese New Year holiday in late January.

The average daily passenger traffic of domestic airlines during the Labor Day holiday exceeded that of the pre-pandemic level in 2019, figures from Flight Master showed. The country’s three biggest state-owned carriers -- Air China, China Southern Airlines, and China Eastern Airlines -- logged gains of 114 percent, 108 percent, and 104 percent respectively.

Domestic air fares jumped 30 percent for the holiday period from the same time in 2019, with bookings to popular cities in China soaring 50 percent, according to data from Ctrip and Qunar.

Shenzhen Airlines said on April 29 that it likely had a record single-day profit of more than CNY50 million (USD7.2 million) on April 28, one day before the holiday.

Joy Air logged its highest daily passenger revenue on April 28, with hourly income and passenger kilometer revenue surging 155 percent from a year earlier, marking the biggest jump since the Chinese New Year, the Xi'an-based carrier said.

The Wuhan branch of China Eastern Airlines said its daily passenger revenue was 30 percent higher on April 28 than on the same day in 2019, posting its best level in years, with single-day profit climbing to a record high of over CNY10 million, it noted.

With pandemic controls relaxed, the number of people entering and leaving China over the Labor Day holiday also rose from a year earlier, but because international flight volumes are below 40 percent of what they were four years ago, outbound bookings also remained lower.

Entries and departures climbed about 2.2 times to an average of 1.3 million per day during the holiday compared with a year ago, but recovered to just 59 percent from 2019, data from the National Immigration Administration showed.

Editors: Shi Yi, Martin Kadiev

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Keywords:   Airline