China’s Civil Aviation Administration (CAAC) issued Domestic Route Flight Review
Optimization Measures to curb excessive carrier concentration and homogeneous
competition on some routes. The measures tighten market-entry controls and
flight-volume management, adjust scheduling and operating-permit exit rules.
Market access will be regulated using carrier count, passenger load factor and
passenger throughput to steer orderly route entry and resource allocation.
Flight-volume reviews will adopt improved metrics and include support measures
for trunk and basic network routes to guide airlines’ capacity deployment.
Operating-permit rules clarify continuous-compliance requirements,
flight-execution rate calculation, incentives for voluntary permit return or
cancellation, and operational-efficiency supervision to strengthen permit
management and exit mechanisms.
