Air trips up 20 pct during Spring Festival

Chinese passengers made 7.69 million trips by air during the week-long Spring Festival, up 19.8 percent from last year's holiday, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) on Friday.

The number of tourists who took flights hit a peak of 1.26 million on Thursday, the last day of the holiday, said Xia Xinghua, deputy head of the CAAC.

On average, 66 percent of seats on flights across the country were occupied during the holiday, up 2 percentage points from the corresponding period last year, said Xia.

The Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, is traditionally a time for family reunions across the nation.