China’s airlines flew a record number of people in the first quarter, amid government efforts to boost the nation’s tourism sector and strong demand for holidays at home.
Total air passenger traffic reached almost 180 million trips in the first three months of 2024, state broadcaster CCTV said Tuesday, citing data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China. That’s the most ever for such a quarter and represents year-on-year growth of 37.7%.
While air traffic for the first quarter of 2023 was relatively subdued considering China only threw off the last of its strict Covid controls in January of that year, those figures are still 10.2% higher than 2019.
