Airline News
China Digest: Cargo merger, Colorful Guizhou, Hainan
June 29th 2015
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) last week denied a Xinhua report alleging its deputy director, Zhou Laizhen, Read More » had said the country’s “Big Three” state-owned carriers are to merge their cargo units to form the largest freight operator in Asia. However, the South China Morning Post has quoted Qi Qi, a professor at Guangzhou Civil Aviation Academy, as saying he had heard from people “in the circle” that the cargo merger was likely on the agenda of China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (Sasac), but the CAAC might not be in an appropriate position to say that since it was no longer the airlines’ owner but only its regulator. Qi Qi also said a merger would make sense, given it could optimise the use of resources and build a Chinese cargo operator with strong international competitiveness. Meanwhile, one of the parties involved, China Southern Cargo, has confirmed it would reintroduce two B747-400Fs retired in 2013 to its fleet this July/August as the cargo market continues to improve. The B747s will join China Southern Cargo’s nine B777Fs.
The carrier’s passenger unit, China Southern Airlines, is suffering from declining year-on-year traffic, having reported 5.2% less passengers in May resulting in a 2.5% load factor drop to 79.4%. Nevertheless, the Guangzhou-based carrier, Asia’s largest, continues to build its network, last week launching a daily JFK B777-300ER service, as well as deploying the A380 on the daily Beijing-Amsterdam route. Meanwhile, private rival Hainan Airlines, which reported 5.8% more passengers in May boosting its load factor 2% to 87.5%, last week launched three routes between Mainland China and the U.S. Hainan inaugurated Beijing-San Jose on June 15 and Shanghai-Boston and Shanghai-Seattle on June 20 and June 22, respectively.
In other news, ch-aviation has reported one of three A330s earmarked for HNA Group’s Beijing Capital Airlines first-time international expansion will be dry-leased from Garuda Indonesia. Capital Airlines plans to add three A330s to its fleet from September for long-haul flights from Hangzhou and Beijing to Copenhagen, and possibly Helsinki, bringing the number of Mainland carriers to fly long-haul to seven. Meanwhile, Chinese start-up Colorful Guizhou Airlines will launch domestic operations at the end of this year, its chairman, Zhai Yan, told Mainland media. The carrier signed for seven E-190s, plus ten options, at the Paris Air Show. It is slated to receive the first E-Jet ahead of its launch this year, and is planning to grow its fleet to 30 aircraft by 2020, and between 120 and 140 in the future.
