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Coronavirus: Chinese airlines offering seats at the cost of a vegetable to lure back travellers

By Tony Winterburn • Published: 21 Apr 2020 • 17:02

Chinese airlines are offering tickets at the cost of a vegetable to multi-seat discounts, to rolling out a series of deals to attract travellers in the run-up to Chinese Labour Day.

RECORDING a loss of RMB39.8 billion (€6 billion) in the first quarter of 2020, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the country’s aviation industry is taking its first steps toward recovery as lockdown measures ease and the first major holiday since the nation came to a standstill due to Covid-19, approaches.

“With the government’s policy to restart work and factories, domestic flights are slowly resuming and China’s civil aviation market is beginning to warm up again,” an analyst at VariFlight, a China-based aviation data service company, said.

“On the other hand, due to the large-scale spread of the virus overseas as well as international flight restrictions, international routes still show a downward trend. The recovery of international routes may require more time.”

According to VariFlight’s data, airline operations in mainland China plummeted over 80 per cent between the end of January and February. Domestic flights began to rebound in mid-February and as of this week have risen to almost half of pre-Covid 19 levels.

Coming as a further sign of the market’s recovery, regional carriers including Guizhou Airlines, Air Guilin and Hainan Airlines are all adding new domestic routes for the summer and fall seasons in anticipation of passenger demand.

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