newstodate.aero
Jun 30, 2017 (newstodate): Low-cost traffic in the vast and ever-expanding Chinese market for air transportation accounts for only 8.3 percent of the total passenger volumes.
By comparison, low-cost airlines' market share is 56 percent in the Asean countries, 40 percent in Western Europe, and 32 percent in the US.
Now the country will have at least one new entrant in the LCC business: the Xinjiang region's Urumqi Air that is entering the HNA Group.
Urumqi Air will re-launch as a purely low-cost carrier from mid-July 2017, operating a fleet comprising nine Boeing 737-800 aircraft on 18 routes from its hub at Urumqi Airport.
The carrier has high ambitions to double its fleet before end of this year, and to grow to 50 aircraft by 2020.
The future growth of low-cost flights in China is, however, restrained by allocation of sparse airport slots as well as a general shortage of pilots in a market where Chinese carriers transported 488 million passengers in 2016, up 12 percent, y-o-y.
Urumqi Air is one of the four founding airline members of the U-Fly Alliance - the world's first alliance of low-cost carriers established in January 2016 by HK Express, Lucky Air, Urumqi Air, and West Air.
By comparison, low-cost airlines' market share is 56 percent in the Asean countries, 40 percent in Western Europe, and 32 percent in the US.
Now the country will have at least one new entrant in the LCC business: the Xinjiang region's Urumqi Air that is entering the HNA Group.
Urumqi Air will re-launch as a purely low-cost carrier from mid-July 2017, operating a fleet comprising nine Boeing 737-800 aircraft on 18 routes from its hub at Urumqi Airport.
The carrier has high ambitions to double its fleet before end of this year, and to grow to 50 aircraft by 2020.
The future growth of low-cost flights in China is, however, restrained by allocation of sparse airport slots as well as a general shortage of pilots in a market where Chinese carriers transported 488 million passengers in 2016, up 12 percent, y-o-y.
Urumqi Air is one of the four founding airline members of the U-Fly Alliance - the world's first alliance of low-cost carriers established in January 2016 by HK Express, Lucky Air, Urumqi Air, and West Air.