Home-made C919 fleet to serve Chinese Lunar New Year travel rush

Four home-made C919 aircraft from China Eastern Airlines will serve the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year, as the 40-day travel peak which starts on Friday, China Eastern said on Wednesday. 

The four planes will fly the routes between Beijing and Shanghai, Shanghai and Chengdu in Southwest China's Sichuan Province. 

China Eastern welcomed its fourth C919 plane on January 2, which started flights from Beijing to Shanghai.

On May 28, 2023, China Eastern operated the maiden flight of the C919 and the plane has been flying the route from Shanghai and Chengdu.

China Eastern said in January that its C919 fleet has carried out 655 commercial flights, transporting a total of nearly 82,000 passengers since its maiden flight.

The fleet size for the coming travel rush is part of the plan that China Eastern has planned for the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year travel rush. The carrier will fly 3,280 flights per day during the travel peak, a growth of 42 percent year on year.

Air China said on Tuesday that it plans to arrange 67,691 flights during the 40-day travel peak with an average of 1,693 flights per day, increasing by 32 percent compared with 2019, and rising 40.6 percent compared with 2023.

China is expected to record 9 billion passenger trips during the annual Spring Festival travel rush, the Ministry of Transport said last week. 

The Civil Aviation Administration of China predicted that the total number of passengers via air could hit 80 million in the 40-day travel rush or 2million per day on average, expecting to hit a record.