As of 2025, China’s total aviation population exceeded 500 million, making it the world’s largest market by aviation population.
In 2025, the industry recorded a profit of RMB 6.5 billion (about USD 930 million), with operating performance continuing to improve.
Throughout the year, the industry completed 164.08 billion ton-kilometers in total transport turnover, carried 770 million passengers, and transported 10.172 million tons of cargo and mail, up 10.5%, 5.5%, and 13.3% year-on-year, respectively.
Despite a 4.7% increase in flight volume, the on-time performance rate exceeded 90%. Average flight delays fell by 3.5 minutes year-on-year, and the bridge docking rate at airports handling over ten million passengers reached 85.8%, up nearly 2 percentage points.
International flights recovered to over 90% of 2019 levels, with international passenger traffic rising 21.6% year-on-year. Regular passenger services between China and India resumed, a “southbound route” to Latin America was successfully launched, and the seventh freedom flights from Hainan Free Trade Port made their maiden journey. Passenger traffic to Central Asia, West Asia, Africa, and Latin America increased by 59.3%, 33.4%, 39.0%, and 108.6%, respectively. Aircraft daily utilization averaged 9.1 hours, up 0.2 hours year-on-year, while the passenger load factor and overall load factor reached 85.1% and 73.4%, increasing 1.3 and 1.8 percentage points, respectively.
The industry continued to advance certification for key programs, including new large aircraft models and turbofan engines, issuing the type certificate and production license for the AG600. Post-certification design optimizations and validation for the C919 and C909 also progressed steadily. The C919 safely carried over 4 million passengers, and the C909 successfully expanded into international markets such as Vietnam and Laos.
Efforts to reduce costs and improve efficiency in air cargo logistics were further strengthened, with domestic and international cargo and mail volumes growing 7.3% and 22.1% year-on-year, respectively. Chinese aviation enterprises captured a 44% share of the international air cargo market, up 3 percentage points. In 2025, the industry logged 14.551 million flight hours across 5.547 million sorties. While flight volume increased 5.3% year-on-year, the rate of reportable incidents per 10,000 flight hours decreased by 5.9%.
