China’s three biggest airlines saw double-digit declines in demand on their so-called regional routes in September, as protests in Hong Kong and Beijing’s travel restrictions to Taiwan took their toll.
Two of them, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines have also aggressively cut capacity on those routes to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan - routes that account for about 5% of their revenue.
Traffic on those routes first turned negative in August and then dropped sharply in September.
China Eastern said demand on its regional routes, as measured by revenue passenger kilometers, tumbled by nearly a quarter in September from the same period a year earlier, while China Southern slid 21.1% and Air China fell 15.7%.
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