A total of 336 domestic flights to and from Beijing will be scrapped from August 15 to October 27. This is because of the poor on time performance due, mainly, to a shortage of technicians and other professionals and the limited capacity of domestic airports. It will lower the number of peak hour flights from more than 60 to 58 per hour.

In a second phase of cuts, from November to March, the number of peak hour flights at Beijing will fall to 55 per hour.

According to the CAAC, most flights to be canceled are operated by the nation’s three leading carriers: Air China, China Southern and China Eastern.

Airlines had been warned over almost 120 flights since the CAAC launched a campaign in June to reduce delays at Beijing airport. The CAAC named the 20 most-delayed flights every 10 days. Flights were cancelled after two warnings.

The campaign should prevent long delays next August when Beijing hosts the 2008 Olympic Games.

The CAAC saw the flight cuts as concrete steps to cool the overheating development of air transport. Sources said 18 airports, including Beijing, Shanghai Hongqiao, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Dalian and Urumqi, had been operating at their maximum capacity.

China’s air transport is growing at an average annual rate of more than 16%. Beijing handled 26 million passengers in the first half of 2007, and the number for the whole year will far exceed its designed annual capacity of 35 million passengers.
Source: People’s Daily Online

A long and extremely well written article in The Economist —its articles are the best-edited in the world — concerns the future of aviation in Asia with special attention been give to China. What follows is the gist of part of the article regarding China. It is well worth looking up the full article using the URL at the end.

According to Naverus, the Seattle-based firm that installed the Required Navigation Performance (RNP) system at Linzhi in Lhasa conventional ground-based aids do allow precise enough navigation to the airport, which sits 9,670 feet above sea level. So it combines the avionics in a modern jet airliner with GPS to guide pilots along a narrow path to the airport. (Note that Aviation Week has the most excellent article on doing a landing using this system. It gives you some idea of the problems involved. If you know anything about flying this article is a serious ‘must-read.’)

China is planning to install scores of such systems, not just where landings and take-offs are difficult but also at congested airports. Already China has announced that from November the vertical spacing between aircraft will follow world standards which effectively doubles the air space in China.

Travelers in China are already getting fed up with airport queues and flight delays and these moves will help eliminate them.

In China last year airline passengers took 179m trips in China (135m on domestic services and 44m on international ones). The government says the numbers are increasing by around 15% a year, with a huge boost expected next year because of the Beijing Olympic Games. By 2010 they are likely to reach 270m — though that will still be only a third of America’s total last year.

China’s Civil Aviation Administration says it will spend more than RMB140 billion ($17 billion) in the next three years on building more than 42 new airports and upgrading others. China will still end up with only around 200 commercial airports, compared with some 20,000 (including many small ones) in America, which has barely one-quarter of China’s population. The potential for China’s aviation market is huge.

China leads the world in the introduction of electronic ticketing, which offers huge savings. Last year 95% of tickets issued in the country were electronic, up from 10% in 2005.

China is also investing heavily in new aircraft. Officials say that mainland carriers plan to double the size of their fleets to a total of more than 1,500 aircraft by 2010, reaching 4,000 aircraft by 2025. China already builds some small regional airliners and has announced plans to challenge Boeing and Airbus in the market for big jets by 2020.
Source: The Economist

This is very important. Very safe. Easy to understand. China will reduce the vertical air space between aircraft starting from November 22. In doing this it is breaking no new ground, taking no undue risks, not breaking any barriers. The Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum, we will call it RVSM, it shortens the vertical space between aircraft from 2,000 feet (610 meters) to 1,000 feet (305 meters.)

First, is it safe? Yes. It is in use most places in the world and is fine provided all instruments have been checked to a fairly high level. If this is done then it makes not difference to safety. But it makes an immense difference to the available flying space, effectively doubling it.

Wang Changshun, CAAC’s deputy director, said, ‘We can make better use of the airspace, increase air traffic flow and reduce flight delays. It is good news for travelers who will have to spend less time sitting in cabins waiting for the aircraft to take off.’

Last year, flight delays topped the passengers’ complaint list. Air traffic control was a major reason for the delays.

CAAC has been under pressure to make better use of the limited airspace, as the aircraft fleet keeps expanding. RVSM, which the International Civil Aviation Organization introduced in the 1970s, is used in Europe, North America, the Pacific, the Atlantic, Japan and Republic of Korea.

CAAC carried out a pilot project in Sanya, South China’s Hainan Province in 2002, and has now decided to apply it nationwide in November, about eight months ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Local airlines will have to equip their aircraft with specially certified altimeters and autopilots before October 1.
Source: China Daily

China’s aviation authorities have promised to make greater efforts during this summer’s thunderstorm season (or, indeed, at any other time) to ease air travel delays. This will be a good thing as, in the past, there have been serious confrontations at airports between irate travelers and airline staff.

The civil aviation administration said on its Web site that China’s main air traffic control centre has installed new equipment that will be able to alert the main airports in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou up to 48 hours in advance of storms. This should help airlines rejig their flights and, perhaps, warn passengers. Off-hand, the number of times an airline has called passengers to tell them their planes will be late because of the weather can be counted on one hand. Unlikely to see that changing.

A far, far better option is the one where the authorities improve coordination with the military, which controls almost all of China’s airways, to open temporary routes around storms and ‘reduce the effect on regular flight operations’.

Chinese airports regularly shut down during rain storms, delaying flights for hours and stranding thousands of passengers.
Source: China Daily