Beijing Capital and Daxing airports cancelled 1,200 flights on Wednesday, as the central government looks to seal off the city amid a secondary spike in COVID-19 infections.
On 17 June, Air China indicated that “large scale cancellations” were likely to take place throughout the day, after municipal officials cited 31 new locally-transmitted cases in the region. China Southern followed suit, cancelling a large number of domestic flights to Shanghai Hongqiao, Changsha, as well as its Guangzhou hub.
City authorities had raised the official disease alert level to Level 3 the previous day, with several high-risk districts placed back into state-enforced lockdown.
The news comes as a marked blow to China’s domestic aviation market, which had made significant steps towards recovering from the crisis.
According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), daily passenger traffic figures first crossed the million-person threshold on 5 June, equivalent to 61.5 per cent of volume year-on-year. By comparison, CAAC reports that at its lowest slump – 23 February – only 132,900 passengers flew onboard domestic services.
The spike has also dealt a setback to international service to China, with Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways pulling flights from Tokyo to China.
Though no other international operators have yet cancelled flights to the capital, it remains to be seen how the surge will impact US-China services. Just this week, Delta and United received clearance from CAAC to operate two weekly flights apiece to Beijing.
