Airline News
Mainland carriers continue their onslaught from the East
November 20th 2015
China's appetite for international travel is surging, undeterred by the slowing of its economy, and the country's carriers are picking up extra passengers as fast as they are adding capacity. Read More »
Air passenger traffic on the Mainland, in RPKs, increased 15.1% year-on-year in the first nine months of the year. International travel was especially robust, with RPKs on international routes surging by 29.1%.
To meet this demand, China’s carriers have been adding new destinations to their networks during the past 24 months at mindboggling speed. To name a few, Air China has added services to Addis Ababa, Havana and Montreal, China Eastern Airlines is adding Auckland, Brisbane and Chicago, China Southern Airlines has also added Auckland and will add Rome and Christchurch from December, while Hainan Airlines has added San Jose and Boston and plans to launch Sydney, Manchester and Tel Aviv within the next six months.
This week, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has received a flurry of new route applications. Air China has applied for four-weekly rotations, respectively, from Shanghai’s Pudong to Barcelona and Manchester starting June using A330-200 aircraft. It would have the monopolies on both routes. China Eastern has requested four-weekly B767 traffic rights between Pudong and Jakarta from January, while Hainan plans four-weekly frequencies, respectively, between Beijing and Calgary, as well as Shanghai and Brussels, from June.
Meanwhile, Xiamen Airlines, the SkyTeam carrier, will launch thrice-weekly Fuzhou-Sydney operations from November 29, followed by twice-weekly Xiamen-Sydney operations from December 5, both using the B787-8. Further, it will launch a Xiamen-Denpasar B737 route in January. Continuing the growth momentum, Xiamen Air this week revealed it plans a thrice-weekly Xiamen-Melbourne service from June, also using the B787.
Another long-haul market entrant is Hainan subsidiary Tianjin Airlines. The carrier is set to open a four-weekly Tianjin-Chongqing-Vancouver service from June, deploying an A330 out of an order for 20 allocated to the carrier earlier this year. With an eye on further expansion, Tianjin president Liu Lu said that as the carrier takes delivery of more A330s, it will be applying to open more long-haul routes to Europe, North America and Southeast Asia.
The new route adds to the international tier-two schedule count from Capital Airlines, Tianjin's sibling Hainan subsidiary, which launched weekly A330 flights from Beijing and Hangzhou to Copenhagen in September, with plans to open Helsinki before year-end.
Underlining the increasing importance of the North American routes flying from tier-two Chinese cities, Sichuan Airlines continues to operate its twice-weekly Chengdu-Shenyang-Vancouver A330 service launched in 2012
