China’s domestic air traffic has plummeted, have they told the truth about the recovery?
Gary Leff on February 9, 2021.
The original covid-19 epidemic in China was probably 40 times more severe than reported.
Although the lack of transparency is largely attributable to the national government, it is likely that local officials minimized the severity of the crisis at the outset. President Xi is now betting that China has beaten the virus and is among the best in the world. Without it, his re-election is in jeopardy. What does the 50% drop in air travel mean in one year after China supposedly conquered the virus?
I was skeptical that demand for domestic air travel in China had actually returned to pre-crisis levels, as the government indicated, but it indicated that it had reached almost 100% of pre-crisis capacity.
This is no longer the case. OAG data shows that capacity fell by nearly 27% and more than 3.2 million domestic flights were lost between last week and this week, following a decline in recent weeks,
although the number of domestic flights is expected to increase as the Chinese New Year approaches.
Here is the number of seats by region for the current week, compared to last week, and compared to last year.
Last week
January 2020
12,381,874
-21.0%
-50.8%
12,288,712
4.2%
-45.7%
4,164,672
1.2%
-61.7%
4,082,815
-2.3%
-78.1%
3,545,097
1.1%
-31.3%
2,183,589
-2.3%
-55.7%
1,996,247
-3.3%
-50.5%
1,632,279
0.2%
-33.2%
1,490,107
2.2%
-59.7%
1,230,554
9.4%
-56.6%
886,455
-11.0%
-49.0%
516,758
6.3%
-47.6%
448,778
-41.5%
438,502
-4.7%
-58.5%
387,559
-41.6%
309,084
-2.2%
-59.1%
174,485
1.8%
-49.4%
48,157,567
-5.7%
-54.9%
Week | Compared to | Compared to | ||||
February 8. | ||||||
North-East Asia | ||||||
North America | ||||||
Southeast Asia | ||||||
Western Europe | ||||||
South Asia | ||||||
Midest | ||||||
South America | ||||||
Central America | ||||||
Central/E. Europe | ||||||
Southwest Pacific | ||||||
North America | ||||||
Caribbean | ||||||
East Africa | ||||||
North Africa | ||||||
Central and West Africa | ||||||
North Africa | ||||||
Central Asia | ||||||
Total |
The United States is now the largest aviation market in the world. Vietnam, which largely ignored the virus in the early days (but experienced some outbreaks), returned to 84% of its capacity last year. This contrasts with the UK at only 11% and Germany at 13%. China’s figures now reflect the world average.
Read more View of the wing
Leave a comment
Related Tags:
forwardkeys, iata, china air travel recovery, civil aviation administration of china, the main purpose of the g20 is to, economic impact of covid-19 by country, economic impact of covid-19 on australia, lowy institute covid performance index, gross national income per capita, the australian