China Eastern Airlines carries nearly 16.5 million passengers during Spring Festival travel rush

China Eastern Airlines

SHANGHAI, March 12, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The 2024 Spring Festival travel rush that lasted some 40 days came to an end on March 5. China Eastern Airlines, along with its subsidiaries Shanghai Airlines and China United Airlines, operated a total of 106,800 passenger flights, transporting nearly 16.5 million passengers, with an average load factor exceeding 82%.

According to statistics released by China Eastern Airlines, the airline carried an average of more than 412,400 passengers on a daily basis during the Spring Festival travel rush, with the peak period occurring from Feb. 14 to 16, during which the daily passenger volume exceeded 480,000 for each of those three days.

As the largest home based airline in Shanghai, China Eastern Airlines facilitated over 44,000 arriving and departing flights at the Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport and Shanghai Pudong International Airport during the Spring Festival travel rush. The airline served over 6.85 million passengers, including more than 530,000 transit passengers and over 4,000 unaccompanied minors.

"Outbound travel" became one of the key words for this year's Spring Festival travel rush. Benefiting from favorable factors such as the implementation of visa-free policies, China Eastern Airlines' flights to Southeast Asia and between China and Italy remained popular. 

In particular, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand saw a large influx of passengers after relevant visa-free policies were implemented.

In the first two months of this year, China Eastern Airlines' flights to Malaysia had an average load factor of 82.7%. Meanwhile, the passenger volume on flights between China and Italy saw a year-on-year increase of 62%.

Furthermore, China Eastern Airlines' industry-leading "full-journey online" in-flight Wi-Fi service also experienced a peak in usage during this year's Spring Festival travel rush. Statistics show that during the travel rush, the airlines' in-flight Wi-Fi service was provided on 10,787 wide-body aircraft flights, used by over 540,000 passengers.