Chinese airlines prepare for New Year travel surge
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Airlines in China are adding thousands of extra flights to cater for the expected surge in traffic during the Lunar New Year holidays.
Described as the world’s biggest human migration, the 40-day Spring Festival will see 42 million Chinese travel by air, either to holiday destinations or their family homes. And to handle this travel boom, Chinese airlines are laying on extra services across multiple domestic and international routes.
The China Daily reported Xia Xinghua, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), as saying this week that Chinese airlines will provide at least 1.1 million seats every day to meet the extra demand. The number of weekly domestic flights will increase 24% to approximately 62,000, while international flights will increase 20% to more than 9,600 weekly services.
China’s ‘big three’ airlines have announced plans to add more than 8,000 extra flights over the 40-day holiday, including more than 4,000 for China Eastern Airlines and 3,000 for Air China.
Other carriers planning a major increase in flights include Xiamen Airlines, which will operate 1,600 more services, and Shenzhen Airlines, which plans to add approximately 1,000 extra flights.
And Zhu Mei, a spokesperson for Air China, called on passengers to book their tickets as early as possible to avoid disappointment.
“The sooner our passengers book their tickets, the easier it will be for us to arrange our flight schedules and optimise the efficiency of our operation, thus reducing the delay rate,” Zhu said. “In order to strengthen our on-time performance, we will improve our weather forecasts and monitor of flight operations.”
The most popular domestic destinations are expected to be the main tier one cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, plus the beach resort of Sanya, while there is also expected to be high demand for international routes to Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam.
The 40-day Spring Festival will last from 16 January to 24 February 2014, with the actual Lunar New Year falling on 31 January.
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