On the evening of September 15, airlines including Air China (10.250, -0.26, -2.47%), China Eastern Airlines (4.980, -0.10, -1.97%) and Spring Airlines (49.510, -1.34, -2.64%) disclosed their key operational data for August 2022. According to the announcement, several airlines achieved more than 50% year-over-year passenger turnover growth in August this year.
Passenger Turnover of Three Major Airlines Surges Year-on-Year
Air China announced in the evening of September 15 that in August 2022, the company and its subsidiaries recorded a 34.8% year-on-year increase in passenger capacity input (in terms of available seat kilometers); and a 56.4% year-on-year increase in passenger turnover. Among them, domestic passenger capacity input rose 37.3% year-on-year and passenger turnover rose 60.1% year-on-year. In terms of seat occupancy, Air China's average seat occupancy rate in August was 66.9%, up 9.2 percentage points year-over-year and 0.7 percentage points sequentially.
China Southern Airlines (6.500, -0.17, -2.55%) became the airline with the highest year-over-year passenger turnover growth rate in August with a 67.72% growth rate. According to the disclosure, China Southern's passenger capacity input (in terms of available seat kilometers) rose 46.91% year-on-year in August this year, with international capacity input up 14.25%. Passenger traffic increased by 67.72% year-on-year, with domestic and international traffic rising by 70.06% and 23.16% respectively. Meanwhile, China Southern Airlines achieved a 68.91% passenger seat rate in August, up 8.55 percentage points year-on-year.
China Eastern Airlines, on the other hand, led the industry in the year-on-year growth rate of passenger seats. According to the disclosure, China Eastern's passenger seat rate increased by 11.18% year-on-year in August, achieving an overall seat rate of 67.01%. In terms of passenger turnover, China Eastern's 62.14% year-on-year growth was also quite impressive.
According to the 2022 summer civil aviation operation summary data disclosed by Flight Manager recently, the number of flights executed in the 2022 summer campaign was 608,000, recovering to 65% of the same period in 2019, and the number of summer flights on some domestic routes has far exceeded that before the epidemic. China Southern Airlines, Eastern Airlines cargo business has grown steadily
Let's look at the cargo side again. From an overall perspective, the cargo situation of the airlines in August 2022 showed a divergent trend, with the cargo capacity and cargo and mail turnover of China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines steadily increasing, and the overall cargo data of Air China and Juneyao Airlines (15.290, -0.47, -2.98%) showing a certain decline.
Data disclosed by China Southern Airlines showed that in August 2022, China Southern's cargo capacity input (in terms of available tonne kilometers - cargo and mail shipments) rose 25.50% year-on-year; cargo and mail turnover (in terms of revenue tonne kilometers - cargo and mail shipments) rose 17.57% year-on-year; and cargo and mail load factor was 57.39%, down 3.87 percentage points year-on-year The cargo and mail load factor was 57.39%, down 3.87% year-on-year.
Data provided by China Eastern Airlines showed that cargo and mail turnover (in terms of cargo and mail tonne kilometers carried) in August increased by 37.87% year-on-year, with international cargo and mail turnover up 70.87% year-on-year; in addition, cargo and mail load factor also rose by 10.63% year-on-year.
For Air China, cargo capacity input (in terms of available cargo tonne kilometers) was down 22.7% year-over-year and 24.3% sequentially; cargo and mail turnover (in terms of revenue cargo tonne kilometers) was down 38.9% year-over-year and 26.6% sequentially; cargo load factor was 39.2%, down 10.4 percentage points year-over-year and 1.3 percentage points sequentially. In addition, Juneyao Airlines' cargo and mail load factor also dropped 12.24% year-over-year in August.
Airline companies actively resume and add new routes
With the recovery of passenger demand, major airlines gradually started to add new domestic routes and actively resume international routes.
Taking China Southern Airlines as an example, in August, it added new routes such as Xining-Luoyang-Hangzhou-Luoyang-Xining, Shanghai Hongqiao-Guilin-Shanghai Hongqiao and Jieyang-Xi'an-Jieyang, all with seven flights per week. It is worth mentioning that Air China also introduced three new aircraft in August (including one A319NEO aircraft, one A350 aircraft and one ARJ21 aircraft), bringing the total number of transport aircraft operated by Air China to 885 by the end of August.
Lucky Air also added a number of new routes in August, including Chengdu Tianfu-Harbin round-trip, additional Huizhou-Yichang-Xining round-trip, and Taiyuan-Xining round-trip. For its part, Spring Airlines added routes such as Pudong-Jiujiang-Chengdu Tianfu, Dalian-Wenzhou, Xi'an-Jiayuguan, and Zhengzhou-Jieyang in August.
The recovery of international routes has been the focus of attention inside and outside the industry. In recent times, many domestic airlines have accelerated the pace of gradually resuming international flights. Take Air China as an example, on September 8, Air China announced the resumption of the Chengdu Shuangliu-Frankfurt, Germany route with a round-trip flight every Thursday. 
