China's civil aviation market is experiencing an accelerated recovery on the back of rising flight volume, with domestic summertime ticket bookings surging about 300% over the past week and market watchers predicting that China is witnessing a turning point as more cities are moving to lift travel restrictions.
Domestic summer air ticket bookings in the third week of June rose nearly 300% from the previous week, with air ticket searches growing by more than 70%, according to travel platform qunar.com on Tuesday.
Increased demand has also driven up flight prices. The average price of domestic passenger flight tickets increased to RMB 685 (USD 102.4) in June from RMB 494 in March, an increase of about 39%, qunar.com told the Global Times.
The increase is also an echo of the rising demand for air travel, sparked by relaxed travel restrictions across a number of provinces and regions such as Northwest China's Qinghai, Northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Central China's Hubei on the eve of the traditional summer holiday season.
Huang Xingwen, vice general manager of Shanghai-based Spring Airlines, predicted that the number of domestic flights would return to pre-epidemic levels in the middle of July, as the number of passengers keeps growing.
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