Domestic airlines post core business loss in April

The nation’s three major airlines all saw a revenue slump in April due to declining seat-kilometers and ticket prices, sources said.

Domestic carriers booked 1.4 billion yuan ($228 million) profit in April, a decline of 30 percent year-on-year, and their core businesses continue to run deficits, chinanews.com reported on May 16, citing unnamed sources from the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

Airlines are lowering their ticket prices to grab more market share, but there is no sign this will improve their bottom lines in May. Airlines’ capacity expansion will further drag down seat-kilometers — the number of airline seats paid for times the number of kilometers flown — and ticket prices. Their losses this month will continue, a report from Citic Securities said.

The nation’s airlines transported 28.49 million passengers in April, a year-on-year growth of 9.2 percent, and 461,700 tons of cargo were handled through domestic carriers, up 3.6 percent year-on-year, the CAAC said.