Passenger loads at China’s top three airlines are rebounding as travel picks up again, boosted by people flying back to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year holidays and celebrating the chance to reunite with families and friends after nearly three years of Covid restrictions.
(Bloomberg) — Passenger loads at China’s top three airlines are rebounding as travel picks up again, boosted by people flying back to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year holidays and celebrating the chance to reunite with families and friends after nearly three years of Covid restrictions.
China Southern Airlines Co. filled 72.7% of its seats in January, the highest passenger load factor among the trio, exchange filings show. That was up from 63% a year ago. Air China Ltd. was next, with a passenger load factor of 69.9% for the month, followed by China Eastern Airlines Corp., at 68.3%.
Passenger load factor is the percentage of seats that have been filled on a plane, and is an indicator of profitability.
The nation’s largest three carriers lost 190 billion yuan ($27.7 billion) over the last three years as Covid upended travel, company filings showed last month. Losses accelerated in 2022, when authorities persisted with lockdowns and mandatory quarantine to contain the virus, even as the rest of the world moved on and reopened.
In addition to the disruption caused by the pandemic, the Chinese airlines have said they were affected by high oil prices and a weaker yuan, which dropped about 8% against the dollar last year.
Caixin recently said that several state-owned airlines had been criticized by Beijing for offering cut-price tickets in order to fill seats. The Civil Aviation Administration of China, which denied that charge, has in the past imposed restrictions on cheap tickets, saying in 2021 it wanted to avoid malicious competition that may cause “cabbage prices”.
A CAAC official said last month that China expects the number of international flights to rebound to between 15% and 25% of levels before the pandemic by the end of March.
The recovery in international flights is slower than for domestic services due to the longer time needed by airlines to arrange capacity and restart routes, and the reluctance of some people to travel abroad, the CAAC official Liang Nan said.
International flight passenger traffic improved in January, the Shanghai Securities News reported Thursday. As of Feb. 6, for example, China Eastern was operating 52 international routes with 302 flights weekly. That will rise to 60 routes and 410 weekly flights by Feb. 28.
In a briefing Thursday, CAAC Deputy Director Wu Shijie said passenger traffic in January was 74.5% of the level in the same month of 2019, while airfreight volume stood at 72.9%. There were 55.2 million air passenger trips from Jan. 7 to Feb. 15, covering the Lunar New Year period, up 39% from the same time last year and at 76% of 2019’s level.
(Updates with January statistics from CAAC briefing in final paragraph.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.