Canada has eliminated Covid-era flight restrictions on mainland China, opening the way Chinese airlines to add more flights to destinations such as Vancouver.
The Canadian Transportation Agency rescinded a prior ruling from February 2022 that capped services by Chinese carriers at just six round trips per week, according to a filing this week on its website.
While the number of flights between Canada and the mainland operated in October 2019 topped 100 returns per week among both countries’ carriers, they remain at fewer than 10 weekly as of this month, according to aviation data company Cirium.
Air Canada, Canada’s largest airline, said in a news release that it will resume daily services to Beijing on Jan. 15 and increase its flights to Shanghai on a daily basis on Dec. 7. Those routes are operated from Vancouver.
The Canadian transport agency’s latest move allows carriers like China Southern Airlines Co., Air China Ltd. and China Eastern Airlines — previously the biggest Chinese operator on flights to Canada — to increase their number of flights. That could include redirecting some of their excess flight capacity, which has flooded major markets like Europe and Southeast Asia.
The regulatory change “could mean the market grows 10-fold in the near term, if it returns near pre-pandemic levels,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Tim Bacchus and Eric Zhu said in a note.
Further south, China’s carriers remain severely restricted on flights into the US, with a cap limiting the number of services to around 25% of pre-Covid levels.
— With assistance from Thomas Seal and Mathieu Dion
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