Foreign governments may be placing restrictions on visitors from China, but that’s just the half of it. With demand for air travel to China sinking lower and lower, so many airlines are axing their services. Air China, on the other hand, is sinking deep into its coffers to keep flying the flag.
It costs in the region of US$25,000 per hour to operate a 747 Jumbo Jet. That’s a huge amount of money to be plying into half-empty, daily flights across the Pacific. While some run in fear of the coronavirus, for pragmatic others it is a simple matter of supply and demand.
With no Demand, Why Keep up the Supply?
Last week, over 25,000 flights to, from or within China, were cancelled, OAG Aviation has revealed. On just 1 day, last Tuesday, two thirds of 16,623 Chinese airlines’ flights never made it to the sky.
It all means the coming of the Year of the Rat has not been the travel bonanza of usual. The London Free Press has reported that China Ministry of Transportation data shows trips over Chinese New Year fell 30 percent, to 1.3 billion, compared to last year.
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Air China hopes to buck the trend. According to One Mile at a Time, “The airline has filed with the US Department of Transportation to request the right to operate a total of just seven weekly frequencies to the US, but those would include four US cities. Air China wants to fly the following for a period of 180 days, using Boeing 777-300ERs: 4x weekly from Beijing to Los Angeles to San Francisco [and] 3x weekly from Beijing to New York JFK to Washington.
“As the airline describes it, this is intended to maintain essential air connectivity between the US and China in the most economical way.”
Nevertheless, Air China is cancelling a slew of its other international flights, including Beijing-Manila, Beijing-Singapore, Beijing-Rome, Beijing-Milan, Shanghai-Milan, Hangzhou-Rome, Beijing-Ulaanbaatar and Hohhot-Ulaanbaatar.
Nanjing and China; Airline Cancellations
For us here in Nanjing, a significant number of international routes have been suspended. Finnair will not fly again to Helsinki until 29 February at the earliest. Lufthansa to Frankfurt has been suspended until 28 March. Neos (Italy), MAI (Myanmar Airways International) and Lion Air Indonesia have stopped services from Nanjing until further notice.
Flights to Japan and Korea are continuing, although all concerned airlines are making significant adjustments to their scheduling. Most other international airlines are flying as normal.
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For the country as a whole, the majority of international airlines are suspending their flights to and from mainland China until either 29 February or 28 March. Among the major carriers, these include United Airlines, Air Canada, American Airlines, Finnair, KLM, Virgin and Iberia.
Some are being more conservative; Delta has suspended all mainland China routes until 30 April. Others have put flights off indefinitely, notably British Airways, Rwanda Airlines, VietJet Air and Malaysian Airlines (Sabah to Shanghai from 18 February).
Air France and KLM will gradually resume flight operations between Beijing and Shanghai around the middle of March.
A full list of suspensions, cancellations and adjustments has been published by BCDTravel.
While China’s civil aviation authority has urged the country’s airlines to continue flying their international routes, to date it appears that Air China may be the only one with the money to keep it up for the next 6 months.
