Hainan Air to fly into soaring growth

(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2007-06-26 09:11

Hainan Airlines Co, a Chinese carrier backed by United States billionaire George Soros, expects to increase sales at least 15 percent this year because of rising travel in the world's most populous country.

"China is a very big market and the aviation industry keeps growing," Chairman Chen Feng said in Singapore yesterday, where he is attending a World Economic Forum conference. Last year, China's fourth-largest carrier by fleet size posted sales of 12.4 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion), said Bloomberg News.

The combined sales of the nation's airlines increased 11 percent to 21.1 billion yuan in May from a year earlier, exceeding costs of 19.9 billion yuan, according to the General Administration of Civil Aviation.

"People are getting richer and there will be more demand for travel in the future," said Jack Xu, a Shanghai-based analyst at Sinopac Securities Asia Ltd.

Passenger traffic in China will increase at an average annual rate of 7.2 percent until 2025, according to Airbus SAS, the world's biggest commercial aircraft maker.

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