China’s aviation industry registered an on-time rate of 68.37% last year and the top five busiest airports were in the Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou areas, according to a report of the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
About 82% of domestic services were within the range of 400 to 1,800 kilometers. There was an average of 10,000 flights a day and a total of 7.5 million take-offs and landings. The periods with heaviest air traffic were summer and Spring Festival, and between 7:00 to 22:00. The fuel cost for each plane per hour continued to fall since 2011.
Compared to North America and Europe that had no more than 400 flights a day for the busiest segments, China had 13 busy segments that served 500 flights per day last year. The busiest flight segment had an average daily traffic of 1,100 flights.
The five busiest airports in 2014 were Beijing Capital Airport, Shanghai Pudong Airport, Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, Guangzhou Baiyun Airport and Shenzhen Baoan Airport. Xinjiang Autonomous Region had the fastest growth in aviation traffic at over 16% and the Northeast and Northwest regions had over 12% growth. The aviation capacity of North, East and South China was reaching optimum point and growth was stable in those regions.
In the eight years between 2006 and 2014, China’s aviation traffic had grown 130% from 3.4 million flights to 7.5 million flights, at an average annual growth rate of 10.8%. However the on-time rate of flights has decreased y-o-y at a rate of 1.46% per year. In 2014 alone, 36.09% of all flights were delayed up to 30 minutes, 2.88% were delayed over four hours and 2.76% were canceled, returned or diverted. The three most punctual airlines were Air China, China Southern Airlines and Sichuan Airlines.(Translation by David)
