Take to the Skies: 2024 Winter and Spring Flight Plans Unveiled with Up to 7% Fare Cuts

Starting today (27), civil aviation across the country will begin implementing the flight plan for the 2024/25 winter and spring season.

Singapore Airlines’ season will last until March 29, 2025, with a total of 154 days. A total of 194 domestic and foreign airlines plan to organize 118,000 passenger and cargo flights every week, an increase of 1.2% compared to the same period last year.

  The flight plan for the winter and spring 2024 season will be implemented from now on

In terms of domestic flights, 49 domestic airlines expect to operate 95,968 domestic flights (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) every week. Among them, there are 93,570 passenger flights per week and 2,398 cargo flights per week.

• As for flights to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, 34 airlines have approved their planned requests for 3,124 weekly passenger and cargo flights. Among them, there are 1,734 weekly flights to Hong Kong; 648 weekly flights to Macau and 742 weekly passenger and cargo flights between 18 mainland destinations and 4 destinations including Taoyuan, Taiwan;

• In terms of international flights, 178 domestic and foreign airlines have approved their planned requests for 19,327 weekly passenger and cargo flights, covering a total of 79 overseas countries, involving 57 Belt and Road co-builder countries, 10,326 weekly flights, equal to 53.48%.

  Follow international practices

  Flight plans are changed twice a year

Following international practice, the civil aviation industry adjusts flight plans twice a year.

• The flight schedule for the summer and autumn seasons is implemented from the last Sunday in March to Saturday of the last full week of October each year.

• The flight schedule for the winter and spring seasons is implemented from the last Sunday in October to Saturday of the last full week of March of the following year.

The two seasonal changes that are carried out uniformly every year by global civil aviation serve on the one hand to take into account the routing needs of the different destinations in the low and high seasons and, on the other, to adapt to the conversion of the time from winter to summer time in some countries.

Furthermore, weather changes and differences in air pressure in different seasons lead to large differences in flight standards and flight times, routes, etc. must be adjusted accordingly.

After this seasonal change, flights to popular autumn and winter tourist destinations have increased. There are more choices for traveling to the most popular tourist “small towns.”

Overall, during the new season, 37 airlines organized a total of 6,102 flights per week on 654 newly opened independent domestic routes, and the number of newly opened independent routes increased by 26.7% year-on-year. Focus on connecting and branch routes and regional routes between regional airports in tourist destinations such as Xiangxi, Aksu, Hotan, Hami and Kashgar and hub airports in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen.

Furthermore, during the new season, Air China has increased the number of popular winter routes from Beijing to Sanya, Haikou, Guilin and Chengdu to Sanya, Changsha, Guangzhou and other routes. China Eastern Airlines opened 16 new domestic routes including Changchun-Wuxuan-Kunming, mainly involving popular domestic destinations and ice and snow tourist areas. China United Airlines added new routes from Daxing to Xiangxi and reinstated the route from Daxing to Sanya. Xiamen Airlines resumed the Daxing to Haikou route and increased the number of routes from Daxing to Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai Pudong.

  After the adjustment, fares to the most popular destinations fell 7% year over year.

Reporters also learned from a number of online travel booking platforms that, as flight plans adjusted for the new season, fares to the most popular destinations fell 7% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of this year. ‘year.

Statistics show that after the season change, airline tickets to Northeast China, Xinjiang and Hainan decreased by 10% year-on-year; airline tickets to Singapore fell 10% year-on-year;