Spring Airlines chair sees ‘obvious’, but long-drawn recovery as ‘zero-Covid’ eases

Spring Airlines’ chairman has acknowledged that recovery will be a long-drawn process, given the severe impact the coronavirus pandemic has wrought on the Chinese airline sector. Still, Wang Yu, who was speaking in an interview with Chinese state-owned broadcaster CGTN, says the low-cost operator is seeing “obvious” positive signs of a rebound since Beijing eased much of its ‘zero-Covid’ restrictions in January. The airline is currently operating 14,000 flights in a day, a four-fold jump from three months ago, when it was flying only about 3,000 daily flights – nearly all of them domestic flights because at that time China’s borders remained shut. Wang says the privately-owned Spring has recovered about 88% of pre-pandemic 2019 levels, noting that capacity and traffic “even surpassed” 2019 levels. His comments echo sentiments among other Chinese carriers, whose January traffic results show a rebound in travel demand following the abrupt easing of restrictions. Wang adds that the airline’s international capacity has recovered to only around 24% pre-pandemic levels. He told CGTN that the industry “was hit really hard” by the pandemic financially, stressing that the “recovery process will be slow”. “But we have all types of support…those difficulties will be easier to overcome,” adds Wang. <br/>