(Yicai) Jan. 31 -- Spring Airlines, Juneyao Airlines and Hainan Airlines Holding are the only three of the seven listed Chinese carriers which expect to turn losses to profit in 2023. While the big state-owned airlines anticipate remaining in the red due to weaker-than-expected recovery of international flights and excess capacity on the domestic market.

Spring Airlines predicts raking in net profit of between CNY2.1 billion and CNY2.4 billion (USD293.6 million and USD335.5 million) in 2023. If it manages to do so, the Shanghai-based budget carrier will be the most profitable of the seven listed airlines which have all released their forecasts for last year.

By contrast, the Big Three state-owned carriers, namely Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines, are all bracing for huge losses largely due to the sluggish recovery of international flights because of flight restrictions on some routes, visa policies and a lack of guaranteed resources.

This is forcing them to deploy their wide-bodied planes on domestic routes, which is affecting ticket prices and plane utilization rates as well as giving rise to excess capacity. The Big Three have more wide-bodied planes than their peers and thus they are impacted more heavily by the slow recovery of global travel.

The seventh listed airline is regional carrier China Express Airlines which also anticipates failing to return to profit. And other smaller airlines that have not gone public, such as Sichuan Airlines and Shenzhen Airlines, also do not expect to make money last year.

Rising fuel costs and a fractured global supply chain have caused the prices of planes and aviation materials to rise, hindering the performance of Chinese airlines, and this has not been helped by exchange-rate losses from the tumbling Chinese yuan.

The Big Three have set a goal of becoming profitable this year, in line with the Civil Aviation Administration of China's target laid down earlier this month for the civil aviation industry as a whole to make money in 2024.

Around 50 percent more passengers took domestic flights last year than in 2019, according to CAAC data. But international flights are still performing at around 93.9 percent of 2019 levels. Some 7.4 million tons of cargo was transported last year, back to 97.6 percent of 2019 levels.

Editors: Liao Shumin, Kim Taylor