Creating a Relaxed Environment to Boost International Air Transportation

It was informed at the civil aviation work conference on January 13-14 that, in 2010, CAAC will continue to shore up supports to reinforce the development of domestic airlines in an effort to underpin the booming of the whole air transport industry.
In order to cope with the financial crisis, last year CAAC issued ten measures aimed to promote the steady and rapid development of civil aviation that played an important role in rapid recovery and further growth of air transport. Among these measures, some are still of vital significance for future development such as encouraging the merger and reorganization of air transport enterprises, speeding up the approval of cargo airlines, encouraging opening more international and domestic routes, optimizing routes and flight procedures to shorten the flight time, increasing the subsidies to regional aviation, especially the flights in poor and remote areas, implementing the price adjustment mechanism as well as expanding the scope of general aviation services. This year we must continue to implement and put into practice these policies in a bid to make these measures playing a longer time effect. According to the recently issued "Circular on Further Improving Air Traffic Rights and Flight Schedule Management", starting this summer flight season, CAAC will reform administrative mode as regards to the licenses of domestic flights to create a more flexible environment for airlines. The first measure is to implement the scheme of registration, that is, except for flights from the four airports in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to continue the approval & registration scheme, the remaining routes will adopt the registration mode. Secondly, further decentralization should be carried out by implementing the grading management scheme. That is, except the licenses of the four airports in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou which lay charge to CAAC, the license of other airports lays charge to the regional administration of CAAC. Thirdly, approval of non-scheduled flights at busy airports is no longer carried out, instead, CAAC decides to put non-scheduled flights into sequence management of scheduled flights. Fourthly, flights coordination meetings and schedule coordination meetings that were held twice yearly are no longer needed. All coordination will be made through the Internet in order to lesson related costs for airways. Lastly, flight schedules will be more open and transparent. Airliners can enjoy a better operation environment due to these reformed measures. As said that CAAC will continue to step up efforts to develop international air transport, a slew of measures will be taken soon. The first one is to improve the distribution mechanism of international air traffic rights. Aiming at making better use of this measure will make a clear-cut picture of the distribution principles of air rights, and by applying the mechanism of moderate competition, it spurs airlines to open up new routes and enhance the transport capacity. The second is to better improve the admittance and withdrawal mechanism of international routes market and properly lean to airlines that make good use of air traffic rights. The third measure is to increase support in regards to special long-haul routes through subsidy and other supporting measures including allocating a part of domestic air traffic rights to propel airlines for sooner recovery and open up new long-distance routes. Lastly, air traffic rights information release system and airlines (China and foreign) operation information sharing system will be established to provide enterprises timely information for decision making.