Cheap flights to Europe with Chinese airlines: The rise of Chinese airlines in Australia
Just in case you haven't been near the Gold Coast, the Sydney Opera House or the Great Ocean Road in recent times, tourists from the People's Republic of China are flooding in.
茨城航空券Bringing them here for the most part is an ever-increasing number of Chinese carriers. There are now seven China based carriers serving Australian cities, China Eastern, Air China, Hainan Airlines, China Southern, Xiamen Airlines, Beijing Capital Airlines and Sichuan Airlines. Between them they offer non-stop services from at least one Australian city to more than 10 cities in China, with more on the radar.
Hainan Airlines began non-stop flights from Melbourne to Xi'An at the beginning of the month. In September, Beijing Capital Airlines launched a Melbourne-Qingdao-Shenyang service. In January, Air China will begin a non-stop service between Melbourne and Shenzhen. China Eastern Airlines will begin a non-stop service between Sydney and Kunming on November 24. The thrice-weekly flights come on top of China Eastern Airlines' Sydney-Hangzhou service that began on November 16.
Driving this push from Chinese airlines into Australia's airspace is the rise and rise of Chinese tourism. According to the China Tourism Research Institute, 120 million Chinese citizens travelled abroad in 2015. That's just a squeak more than the 117 million who travelled outside China the year before although Australia is easily outpacing that increase. In the year ending June 30, 2016, Australia had 1.136 million visitors from China, a lift of 22 per cent on the previous year.
Those figures go a long way to explaining the enthusiasm among Chinese carriers for services to Australia. Traffic from Australian tourists to China is respectable, although nothing like as big. In the year ending June 30, 2016, 439,000 Australian residents visited China. That's an increase of 83 per cent on the figure for a decade earlier, but overshadowed by the almost 300 per cent increase in visitors from China to Australia over the same period.
