Aviation in China has been developing rapidly for years. Corona put a damper on the industry, but now things are looking up again. Will China overtake the US as the largest aviation market?
The three-year corona restrictions in China with largely closed borders have hit the national airlines hard. While domestic traffic within China has recovered quickly since restrictions were lifted, there are still comparatively few international connections.
Most Chinese airlines still offer many services that you often have to pay extra for in the USA or Europe: checked-in luggage, drinks on board and snacks. One of the reasons for this is that the aviation market in China is much more heavily regulated than elsewhere. Low-cost airlines based on the models of Ryanair or Easyjet have not yet caught on. Airlines in the People’s Republic are mostly state or partially state-owned. The market is dominated by the three major state airlines: Air China, China Southern and China Eastern.
China could replace the US
In parallel to China’s great economic growth in recent decades, the civil aviation market in the People’s Republic has also multiplied, explains David Yu, aviation expert from the Shanghai campus of New York University. “Aviation has broadly grown in line with gross domestic product. And assuming that this will continue, the Chinese aviation market will continue to grow. Whether that’s five percent or more, there is growth in the long term,” Yu predicts .
He believes China will eventually overtake the US as the world’s largest aviation market. “It hasn’t happened yet. But it will happen at some point with the expected growth.”
Exploding passenger numbers, new fleets
In the 20 years before the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic, the number of passengers in China increased roughly tenfold: to around 660 million passengers in 2019. New airports have been built all over the country: large ones such as the new Beijing Capital Airport Daxing with the largest terminal building in the world, but also smaller provincial airports.
The airlines have bought many new planes: in total, around 4,000 passenger planes are in service in China. In China, too, airlines fly almost exclusively with machines from the two major aircraft manufacturers from the USA and Europe, Boeing and Airbus. However, China is now also developing its own aircraft. Individual machines from China’s new medium-haul jet Comac C919 are already in regular flight operations.
No trace of flight shame
More and more people in China can afford to fly. However, fewer people worry about their carbon footprint than in Europe, for example. Flight shame is therefore not an issue in the People’s Republic. Nevertheless, attempts are also being made in China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to aviation expert Yu. “The topic of sustainability is already on the agenda. But it has a lower priority than in Europe or the USA, for example.” Nevertheless, he sees that the topic is being taken more and more seriously.
In fact, China’s state and party leadership does not deny man-made climate change. However, state media do not normally associate global warming and extreme weather situations with CO2 emissions. And so many people in China do not see that flying contributes to climate change.