U.S. and European airlines will benefit from increased demand for travel to China from their recent border reopenings, but not route approvals, new COVID-19 testing rules and enough large aircraft, analysts and industry executives say are made.
Travel is coming back to China, the world’s biggest outbound tourism market worth $255 billion in 2019, after mandatory quarantines ended in the country on January 8. Airfares from China are now 160% higher than before the pandemic, data from travel firm ForwardCase shows, due to limited supply.
Jining Zhan, a 50-year-old attorney based in Iowa, said she paid $1,600 for a one-way ticket in December to fly from Chicago and Dubai to Guangzhou.
“I haven’t visited my family in three years, so I’ll go to the Spring Festival with my sisters,” he said. “The flights were too expensive.” Before the pandemic, he would pay $1,000 to $1,500 for a round-trip direct flight from Chicago.
The round-trip fare on United Airlines from San Francisco to Shanghai for a week-long trip in early March is $3,852 in economy class and $18,369 in business class, according to a Reuters search of the airline’s website.
Cerium data shows global airlines from China operated at only 11% of 2019 capacity levels in January, but that figure is expected to reach 25% by April.
Booking website Expedia said it doubled US-China and Europe-China searches after the reopening was announced.
