Traveling by air has become the choice of more and more Chinese tourists. China's civil aviation transported a total of 121 million passengers last year increasing by more than 40 percent year on year. It is estimated that this rapid growth trend would continue this year and passengers would exceed 140 million person times. China has become true to the name of civil aviation giant.

As learned China has sped up the pace of reform on civil aviation in recent years. The pricing of tickets is no longer of one cut. New policies on pricing of domestic flights have been released. The government is implementing range management and the companies can float prices for themselves within certain limits. It results in better adjustment to the market changes and gains the acknowledgement of consumers. Industrial supervision department gradually loosens the examination and approval of managerial authority and flight adjustments, which consolidates the flight courses and schedules in large and medium-sized hub airports.

The radiating function of such airports as in Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan has been boosted considerably. Cross-region flights such as northwest, southwest and northeast flights have been drastically increased. Meanwhile the government encourages companies to explore international flights. The year 2004 alone saw 13 new international passenger flights and more than 60 percent passenger growth. In the meantime, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) as the industrial supervision department actively promotes the improvement of service in airlines and safeguards the rights and interests of consumers.

In 2004 in the face of growing total flight number, infrastructure and airspace resources being filled to their capacities normal operation rate of all the civil aviation flights still exceeded 80 percent.

Planned investment in fixed assets within the civil aviation industry would reach 20 billion yuan this year to boost the construction of infrastructure and work relating to technologies. There would be about 20 key construction projects including the expansion projects of Changchun Longjiabao Airport and Capital International Airport etc. The civil aviation will also improve on the construction of informatization so as to increase the proportion of electronic passenger tickets to 50 percent in 2005.

The civil aviation will continue to regard security work as top priority; strive to prevent major flight accidents through improving the systems; further establish and perfect the system of consumer affairs management; promote the Client Service Promise System among airlines and publish the normal operation rates, passenger complaint rates and cargo or luggage transportation error rates of the airlines on a quarterly basis.

By People's Daily Online