It seems even super-cheap air tickets cannot lure the average Chinese person away from a love affair with train travel.
That bodes badly for mainland carriers, which are trying to emulate their peers in Europe and the United States, where affordable air travel has largely done away with the need for people to take long train journeys.
But things are different on the mainland. No matter how deep the discount on airfares and how narrow the price difference between air and train tickets this year, just less than 1 per cent of traffic during the 40-day Lunar New Year mobilisation in the country will rely on air travel.
Loaded down with baggage, mainland workers can sleep on train station benches for days before getting a ticket back to their homes hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. This is despite airlines offering tickets that are as cheap as train fares during the Lunar New Year to attract more passengers.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) wanted to boost air travel during the Lunar New Year period by adding 8,000 charter flights, or 750,000 additional seats, during the 40-day holiday period, said He Jinri, a deputy director general at the regulator. However, only 550,000 seats have been sold.
About 70 per cent of mainlanders have never flown. Traditionally, that may have been due to uneven distribution of wealth, making air travel available only to the reasonably well-off. However, with airfares in free fall since October last year, that is seen as no longer a big barrier for the average person.
For example, Hainan Airlines is offering a 200 yuan (HK$226) fare from Taiyuan, Shanxi, to Xian, from January 25 to today. Air China has slashed ticket prices 80 per cent on routes from Beijing to Shanghai for the same period.
Because of overcapacity in fleets operated by mainland carriers, the gap between airfares and train fares is narrowing. The cheapest airfare from Guangzhou to Guilin on January 22 was 460 yuan, compared with 116 to 326 yuan for train tickets of varying classes. The airfare from Guangzhou to Hangzhou on January 22 was 320 yuan, while train fares ranged from 194 to 539 yuan, depending on seating.
However, the percentage of airline trips to total passenger trips this year is still hovering at an unbelievable 0.75 per cent.
Each year, the country experiences the so-called spring mobilisation, when workers employed in the industrialised coastal areas make their way back home to unite with their families in the rural areas before the Lunar New Year.
There will be 2.32 billion passenger trips using multiple modes of transport from January 11 to February 19, a National Development and Reform Commission report says.
Mainland airlines will carry 24 million passengers during the 40 days, a 12 per cent increase from last year, according to CAAC figures. Railways will account for 188 million trips, up 8 per cent from a year earlier. Buses and other road vehicles remain the major mode of transport, accounting for 90 per cent of all trips.
What makes the average worker linger in train stations or at ferry piers or bus stops rather than fly home at a not much greater cost?
The fact that most prefer to go by trains, ships or buses may have more to do with the cultural characteristics of the Chinese, according to some market watchers.
“It is more to do with the mentality of the people,” said Wang Ronghua, a director general of CAAC. “The workers are keen to bring back presents in large quantities for the folks in their hometown, which is a traditional practice during the Lunar New Year. They cannot carry that much if they get on a plane.”
In addition, workers in factories in places such as Guangdong and Shenzhen were the major breadwinners in the family, making them very cautious in spending money on transport, Mr. Wang added.
“They would rather save as little as a hundred yuan for the use of their family than buy air tickets.”
Saving for the future is a trait among the Chinese, especially with the ripple effect of the global economic downturn spreading to the country.
Air travel, it seems, is just a little bit too rich for the masses just yet.
1 comment:
Baggage-laden travellers shun the airlines
Charlotte So
29 January 2009
It seems even super-cheap air tickets cannot lure the average Chinese person away from a love affair with train travel.
That bodes badly for mainland carriers, which are trying to emulate their peers in Europe and the United States, where affordable air travel has largely done away with the need for people to take long train journeys.
But things are different on the mainland. No matter how deep the discount on airfares and how narrow the price difference between air and train tickets this year, just less than 1 per cent of traffic during the 40-day Lunar New Year mobilisation in the country will rely on air travel.
Loaded down with baggage, mainland workers can sleep on train station benches for days before getting a ticket back to their homes hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. This is despite airlines offering tickets that are as cheap as train fares during the Lunar New Year to attract more passengers.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) wanted to boost air travel during the Lunar New Year period by adding 8,000 charter flights, or 750,000 additional seats, during the 40-day holiday period, said He Jinri, a deputy director general at the regulator. However, only 550,000 seats have been sold.
About 70 per cent of mainlanders have never flown. Traditionally, that may have been due to uneven distribution of wealth, making air travel available only to the reasonably well-off. However, with airfares in free fall since October last year, that is seen as no longer a big barrier for the average person.
For example, Hainan Airlines is offering a 200 yuan (HK$226) fare from Taiyuan, Shanxi, to Xian, from January 25 to today. Air China has slashed ticket prices 80 per cent on routes from Beijing to Shanghai for the same period.
Because of overcapacity in fleets operated by mainland carriers, the gap between airfares and train fares is narrowing. The cheapest airfare from Guangzhou to Guilin on January 22 was 460 yuan, compared with 116 to 326 yuan for train tickets of varying classes. The airfare from Guangzhou to Hangzhou on January 22 was 320 yuan, while train fares ranged from 194 to 539 yuan, depending on seating.
However, the percentage of airline trips to total passenger trips this year is still hovering at an unbelievable 0.75 per cent.
Each year, the country experiences the so-called spring mobilisation, when workers employed in the industrialised coastal areas make their way back home to unite with their families in the rural areas before the Lunar New Year.
There will be 2.32 billion passenger trips using multiple modes of transport from January 11 to February 19, a National Development and Reform Commission report says.
Mainland airlines will carry 24 million passengers during the 40 days, a 12 per cent increase from last year, according to CAAC figures. Railways will account for 188 million trips, up 8 per cent from a year earlier. Buses and other road vehicles remain the major mode of transport, accounting for 90 per cent of all trips.
What makes the average worker linger in train stations or at ferry piers or bus stops rather than fly home at a not much greater cost?
The fact that most prefer to go by trains, ships or buses may have more to do with the cultural characteristics of the Chinese, according to some market watchers.
“It is more to do with the mentality of the people,” said Wang Ronghua, a director general of CAAC. “The workers are keen to bring back presents in large quantities for the folks in their hometown, which is a traditional practice during the Lunar New Year. They cannot carry that much if they get on a plane.”
In addition, workers in factories in places such as Guangdong and Shenzhen were the major breadwinners in the family, making them very cautious in spending money on transport, Mr. Wang added.
“They would rather save as little as a hundred yuan for the use of their family than buy air tickets.”
Saving for the future is a trait among the Chinese, especially with the ripple effect of the global economic downturn spreading to the country.
Air travel, it seems, is just a little bit too rich for the masses just yet.
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