The number of scheduled flights from China during January 2023 is projected to reach 99.8% of January 2019 levels as travel recovers ahead of Chinese New Year, as per Cirium. As China hopes to achieve the above figures, the China’s aviation industry will soon cross its overall pre-COVID capacity by the end of January 2023. Cirium projects that, this month alone, over 408,800 flights are scheduled to depart China equating to over 69.4 million seats.
This recovery is largely focussed at domestic travel with intra-China flights being up 9.5% in January 2023 versus 2019. However, international levels are still a long way from returning, with data suggesting just an 10.2% recovery for the month.
The above recovery is largely related to the Chinese New Year, just last year, 73 million passengers took the skies in China.