Chinese airlines to lose US$21 billion in 2022
Eight Chinese airlines recently published estimates of their 2022 results, in which they reflected total losses of around 142 billion yuan ($21 billion) under the effect of pandemic restrictions in the Asian country.
Air China’s losses amounted to approximately 38 billion yuan ($5.63 billion), reported the airline, which in 2021 lost 16.64 billion yuan ($2.46 billion).
For its part, China Eastern Airlines estimated a 37 billion yuan (US$5.5 billion) loss in 2022, after losing 17 billion yuan (US$2.5 billion) in 2021.
Some airlines cited the mobility constraints of the ‘zero covid’ policy and the pandemic in general as factors that affected their business, reported in the official Beijing Daily.
→ Singapore Airlines increases flight capacity and approaches pre-pandemic figures
In addition, the companies blamed the losses on rising oil prices and exchange rate fluctuations in 2022.
For its part, the group in charge of managing Shanghai’s Hongqiao and Pudong airports, Shanghai Airports, and the companies in charge of Canton Baiyun Airport and Shenzhen Airport expect total losses of around 50 billion yuan (US$7.4 billion).
Recently, the Civil Aviation Administration of China expressed optimism for 2023 and announced that it will aim to restore 75% of the sector’s pre-pandemic activity.
After almost three years of harsh restrictions, confinements and almost total border closures that eventually crystallized into protests, China began to dismantle the ‘zero covid’ at the beginning of December, and on January 8 reduced the management of the disease from category A (maximum danger level) to B, thus marking in practice the end of this strategy.
The same date marked the end of mandatory quarantines for passengers arriving in China, which had been in force since March 2020, and the limits on international air traffic, which had been maintained at less than 5% of that existing before the pandemic, reported EFE.
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