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Chinese carriers report encouraging domestic traffic growth for May
June 19th 2020
Notwithstanding this week's flight cancellations due to a fresh coronavirus outbreak in Beijing, there were encouraging signs from the big three Chinese airlines this week that the domestic market was on a recovery trajectory. Read More »
While Air China, China Eastern Airlines (CEA) and China Southern Airlines (CSA) all posted hefty year-on-year passenger declines in May, the figures were an improvement from the number of air travellers in April.
In the case of CEA, the 4.14 million domestic passengers it carried in May was an increase of 57% from 2.64 million in April.
In addition to the pickup in domestic demand, CEA maintained a domestic load factor of 65.6% while growing capacity, measured by available seat kilometres (ASK), 52% from April to May.
CEA attributed the increase to the prevention and control of the coronavirus pandemic in China "being further stabilised and normalised", as well as the "resumption of work and production in various regions being fully promoted".
"The company will actively optimise and adjust its transportation capacity deployment in the future based on the progress of prevention and control of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic and the recovery of market demand," CEA said in its May traffic report published this week.
As well as expanding capacity on existing city pairs, CEA said it had launched new routes in China during May, including Xi’an–Aksu, Lanzhou–Guilin, Luzhou–Nanjing, Luzhou–Hefei, Kunming–Lanzhou–Changchun, Jinan–Yiwu, and Chengdu–Hefei–Weihai.
It also had conducted passenger-to-freighter conversions on 14 A330 family aircraft, which have all been put into operation.
The SkyTeam alliance member's monthly traffic report showed revenue freight tonne kilometres (RFTK) rose 53.6% from April to May.
"During the outbreak of COVID-19, there has been relatively strong demand for medical and anti-epidemic materials. Therefore, the company has promptly carried out freighter conversions for some passenger aircraft to enhance air freight transportation capacity," CEA said.
Air China's monthly traffic report told a similar story, with domestic passenger numbers rising by 52.7%, to 4.04 million in May, from 2.65 million in April.
The Star Alliance member lifted its domestic passenger load factor by 1.8 percentage points to 68.6% in May, from 66.8% in April. ASKs were 45% higher.
Rounding out the big three’s results was CSA, which posted month-on-month domestic passenger growth of 51.9% in May, when it carried 5.8 million travellers on its China network.
The Guangzhou-headquartered carrier lifted domestic ASKs by 39% in May, while load factors improved 3.2 percentage points to 67.8%.
In the week of June 15, OAG figures showed Chinese carriers occupied four of the top 10 global positions in scheduled capacity, with CSA (2), CEA (3), Air China (5) and Xiamen Airlines (9) trailing leader Southwest Airlines from the U.S.
However, the fragility of the recovery in China was highlighted this week when an estimated 1,200 flights into and out of Beijing were cancelled on Wednesday following a fresh outbreak of the coronavirus centred in a Beijing food market.
Authorities cancelled air, rail and bus services and blocked off parts of the city in scenes reminiscent of earlier this year when movement around Beijing was severely restricted to stop transmission of COVID-19.
The 1,200 cancelled flights at Beijing's two major airports, Capital and Daxing, represented about 70% of all scheduled services.
As CEA noted in its monthly traffic report, there was still “great uncertainty” in terms of the impact of COVID-19. Written by Jordan Chong
