Fueled by the longest Lunar New Year holiday in history, passenger traffic at Chengdu's aviation hub has continued to rise. Data released on February 24 showed that during the Spring Festival holiday (February 15–23), the Chengdu aviation hub handled 17,000 flight movements and 2.645 million passengers, representing year-on-year increases of 7.2% and 9.7%, respectively—both setting new historical highs for the same period. On February 23 (the seventh day of the first lunar month), daily passenger throughput reached 316,000, marking a new all-time peak.

Passengers checking in luggage at the airport

This year's Spring Festival featured a segmented holiday pattern combining "family reunions" and "tourism". The first three days of the holiday (from the 28th day of the 12th lunar month to the first day of the first lunar month) were primarily centered on family reunions, with daily passenger volumes around 280,000 before and after Chinese New Year's Eve, dropping to 246,000 on New Year's Eve itself. Starting from the second day of the first lunar month, travel shifted toward tourism, with passenger volume reaching 298,000 that day and exceeding 300,000 per day for the following five consecutive days. On the final day of the holiday, which coincided with the return-travel peak, daily passenger volume hit another record high.

Airport flight operations

The surge in passenger traffic resulted from the dual release of airline capacity and travel demand. During the Spring Festival holiday, the average seat occupancy rate at Chengdu's aviation hub reached 90.7%, up 4 percentage points year-on-year and surpassing the 90% mark for the first time. On February 23, the seat occupancy rate peaked at 94.1%, the highest level in history.

International and regional markets performed notably well, with passenger throughput significantly exceeding levels from the same period in 2019. Increased frequencies on routes to destinations such as Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, and Dubai drove international and regional passenger traffic to 207,000, an average daily increase of 18.4% compared to last year’s Spring Festival and 14.4% higher than in 2019. All regions except East Asia, South Asia, and the Americas surpassed 2019 levels, with Europe and Oceania showing particularly strong growth—up 70% and 120.9%, respectively.

Domestically, popular destinations fell into three categories: first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen; emerging first-tier cities including Hangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, and Changsha; and western tourism provinces like Xizang, Xinjiang, and Yunnan. Warm-weather island cities such as Sanya, Haikou, and Xiamen also remained highly favored. Internationally, Southeast Asia and Oceania were the top regions, with Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore consistently ranking as the top three destinations. Among regional routes, Hong Kong remained the most popular destination, accounting for 70% of regional passenger traffic.

【本文部分内容由AI辅助生成，特此声明。The author(s) generated part of the content in this work with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI), which is hereby declared.】