Impact of conflict

In addition to strong growth, a number of foreign carriers recently canceled their international flights that connect overseas cities with Chinese mainland cities and Hong Kong, as they had to reroute flights to bypass the airspaces of Russia, leading to increased flying time and higher fuel costs, the carriers said.

British carrier Virgin Atlantic announced in July that it would suspend its flights that connect Shanghai Pudong International Airport and London Heathrow Airport after operating the route for 25 years. The last round-trip flights will operate on Oct 25 and Oct 26.

As one of the foreign carriers that entered the China market the earliest, Virgin resumed Shanghai-London flights in May 2023 after a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision to suspend the Shanghai-London route follows the suspension of Virgin's London-Hong Kong route in October 2022 after almost 30 years of operation.

Meanwhile, British Airways said it would temporarily cut the flight frequency of the London-Hong Kong route from two daily flights to one from Oct 27, as the inability to overfly Russia has led to surging operational cost.

British Airways resumed flights connecting London and Shanghai and Beijing last summer after the pandemic. The carrier currently runs daily flights between London and Shanghai, and four times a week to Beijing. The carrier will suspend its Beijing Daxing-London flight from Oct 26.

Currently, eight domestic carriers and two foreign carriers, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, operate 18 China-UK routes. The Chinese carriers are Air China, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Hainan Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines, Tianjin Airlines, Capital Airlines and Juneyao Airlines, according to Flight Master, a travel services platform in China.

The landscape of competition on the China-Europe air route has undergone significant changes after the pandemic, and the competitive advantage of Chinese carriers has become more prominent.

In the first half of this year, domestic airlines operated 72.2 percent of China-Europe flights, and foreign airlines operated 27.8 percent. Before the pandemic, there was not much difference in the share of such flights, when Chinese carriers made up 52.7 percent, and foreign airlines accounted for 47.3 percent, Flight Master found.

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