Chinese airlines deploy more domestically produced C919 to join Spring Festival travel rush

Three Chinese airlines are deploying more domestically produced C919 aircraft to join the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush, which starts from Tuesday.

Starting from January 9, Air China has added a new C919 jet operating on the flight route between Beijing and Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, meaning the total number of air routes operating with C919 during the travel rush period reached to five.

China Eastern Airlines told the Global Times that it plans to deploy 804 passenger aircraft, including 10 domestically-produced C919 aircraft and operate 124,000 flights over the 40-day period. 

As the airline with the largest C919 fleet and the most C919 flight destinations, since its first commercial operation on May 28, 2023, China Eastern Airlines' C919 fleet now equals 10 aircraft, and has carried more than 1 million passengers, and flying to cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Xi'an, Guangzhou, Taiyuan, Chongqing, Wuhan and Hong Kong.

Last year, China Eastern had already deployed four C919 aircraft serving the Spring Festival travel rush in 2024.

At 9:25 am on Tuesday, a C919 plane operated by China Southern Airlines flew from Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in South China's Guangdong Province to Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province. This was the first flight operated by China Southern's domestically-made C919 large aircraft ahead of the Spring Festival travel rush.

This year's travel rush will last from January 14 to February 22 with 80 million passenger trips or 2 million per day on average being made, according to officials from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) on January 8.

The number of daily flights is projected to reach 16,500, the CAAC added. 

Air China plans to operate more than 70,000 flights during the travel rush, a 9.5 percent increase compared with last year.

Among them, the Beijing to Sanya and Chengdu to Sanya routes are all operated by wide-body aircraft. In terms of international travels, Air China plans to add new flights to meet the travel needs of popular outbound tourism destinations such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

China Eastern said a total of more than 9,000 flights will be added during the travel season, among which the number of international and regional flights is expected to recover to 103.8 percent of 2019.

Some Chinese airports also confirmed they will add resources to meet the travel rush.

During this year's Spring Festival travel rush, the Beijing Capital International Airport is expected to transport 7.95 million passenger trips, an average of 199,000 passengers per day, and provide support for 48,000 flights, an average of 1,202 flights per day. 

The airport predicted that the number of flights provided for this year's Spring Festival travel season will increase by about 3.4 percent compared with the same period last year, the airport said on Tuesday.