Civil aviation sector rises to challenge of pandemic

China's civil aviation sector has taken a proactive approach to transporting medical personnel and emergency supplies to aid the global fight against the novel coronavirus, a senior aviation official said.

Sun Shaohua, deputy head of the Civil Aviation Administration of China's operation monitoring center, said the administration has activated guarantee mechanisms to arrange extra flights and organize chartered flights to send medical experts and materials to countries hit hard by the novel coronavirus pneumonia pandemic.

The civil aviation authorities had carried out 575 such flights by Tuesday, Sun said. Those flights ferried 134 medical experts and workers and 9,544 metric tons of epidemic prevention and control supplies to more than 60 countries, including the United States, Iran, Pakistan, Italy, Japan and South Korea, he said.

On April 5, the administration arranged for a chartered flight to transport 37.6 tons of medical supplies to 18 countries in central and western Africa that desperately need medical equipment to deal with increasing caseloads, Sun said.

"The administration will send two flights operated by Air China on Thursday to take medical teams and materials to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso," he added.

Sun said the administration had also adopted a number of measures to bring Chinese studying or living abroad back home, while at the same time taking steps to stop the importation of novel coronavirus cases.

The administration arranged 16 flights to bring 2,744 Chinese citizens back home from Iran, Italy, the United Kingdom, the US and Spain between March 4 and Monday, he said, adding that 1,449 of those brought home were students.

"In the following weeks, the administration, under the coordination of the State Council joint prevention and control mechanism, will carry out major flight tasks in an orderly manner to bring students in urgent need in coronavirus hot spots back home," he said.

To minimize the risk of imported cases, the administration ordered a reduction of flights in and out of the country starting on March 29, Sun said, adding that China had handled only 250 inbound flights from then until Tuesday, carrying a total of 50,306 passengers.

With the exception of 38 inbound flights on March 29, China has seen no more than 20 inbound flights a day, with the number of inbound passengers averaging about 3,000 a day, he added.

In addition to slashing inbound flights, the administration has also required the diversion of such flights originally destined for Beijing to a dozen other cities since March 20. In those cities, all passengers must be tested for the virus upon disembarkation, with those cleared of the pathogen allowed to board the aircraft again and resume their flight to the capital.

By Tuesday, 127 flights carrying 28,697 passengers bound for Beijing had been diverted to the 12 designated airports, Sun said.

Over 86 percent of the passengers failed to pass health inspections or were in proximity to those who failed, he said, adding that they had all been held locally for treatment or placed in a 14-day quarantine.