A total of 336 domestic flights to and from Beijing Capital
International Airport (BCIA) will be scrapped from Aug. 15 to Oct.
27, sources with the Civil Aviation Administration of China
confirmed Wednesday.
The measure came in response to a shortage of technicians and
other professionals and 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 BCIA would fall to 55 per hour, but still
leaving about a minute between each flight.
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.
The CAAC sources said airlines had been warned over almost 120
flights and two service had been canceled since the CAAC launched a
campaign in June to reduce delays at BCIA.
The CAAC named the 20 most-delayed flights every 10 days.
Flights were cancelled after two warnings.
The campaign would prevent long delays next August when Beijing
hosts the 2008 Olympic Games, the sources said.
The CAAC saw the flight cuts as concrete steps to cool the
overheating development of air transport which aggravated flight
delays.
The 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 percent. The BCIA 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, as
the second half usually saw more arrivals and departures.
(Xinhua News Agency August 16, 2007)