VariFlight published Summary Report of the Development of China's Domestic Airports 2016 on January 9th, 2017.

China's domestic airports recorded 3.895 million actual departure flights in 2016.9.5% increase comparing to last year. Each month recorded an increase over the same period of last year, with November scoring the highest increase rate at 12.8%. According to the overall data of actual departures, July and August led the list of number of departures with 0.345 million and 0.355 million departure flights respectively, followed by October with 0.343 million departure flights. The departure flights in the second half of 2016 have increased significantly compared with the first half.

The domestic airports of China recorded an overall on-time performance of 70.4% with an average take-off delay of 33 minutes, achieving a 6-minute decrease of delay time compared with the last year. Departure on-time performance has been improved.

In 2016, domestic airports reported the best departure on-time performance in March at 77.0%, with an average take-off delay time of 27 minutes. On the other end of the spectrum was July with an average departure on-time rate of 62.7% and an average delay of 42 minutes.

Based on the passenger traffics published by The Civil Aviation Administration of China("CAAC"), airports in China mainland are divided into two groups: the ones serve more than ten million passengers annually and the ones serve more than two million passengers annually. Airports that serve more than ten million passengers per year recorded 2.833 million actual departure flights, accounting for 73% of the overall departure flights in China. Xi'an Xianyang International Airport(82.3%), Harbin Taiping International Airport(79.6%) and Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport(78.8%) took the top three rating on the departure on-time performance list, airports on the other end were Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport, Nanjing Lukou International Airport and Shanghai Pudong International Airport at 57.2%, 56.5% and 52.4% respectively, and with the longest average delay time. Xi'an Xianyang which topped the list has an average delay of 23 minutes, while the average delay of Shanghai Pudong was 48 minutes.

Airports in the other group recorded 0.621 million departure flights, accounting for 16% of the overall departure flights. Xining Caojiabao Airport(86.0%), Yinchuan Hedong Airport(83.5%) and Taiyuan Wusu Airport(81.9%) are the best ones on punctuality in this group.

According to Notice of Implementing Measures of Flights Regulation and Monitoring Index 2016 issued by CAAC, airports that recorded monthly flight dispatch reliability rate less than 75% and sat in the bottom three places will be suspended in flights increase, charter service and new routes application for two months. In December 2016, Shanghai Pudong, failing short of the requirement for nine consecutive months (March-November), and Shanghai Hongqiao failing short of the requirement for two consecutive months, were put in continuous suspension in their application of flight increase, charter service and new route.

Large passenger traffics kept the airfield and terminals of Shanghai Pudong extremely busy. As the data indicate, Shanghai Pudong and Shanghai Hongqiao welcomed 106.435million passengers(65.9821 million in Pudong, 40.4529 million in Hongqiao) in total in 2016, achieving 7.31% annual increase and making Shanghai become the fifth city in the world, following by London, New York, Tokyo, Atlanta, that welcomed more than one hundred million aviation travelers per year.

Shanghai Pudong is planning to build a satellite terminal to improve its operation efficiency. The satellite terminal will accommodate 83 fixed air-bridges of various kinds and provide 86-125 parking places for different types of aircrafts while saving reasonable reservation for future development. The satellite terminal is designed to serve 38 million passengers annually and is expected to be completed in 2019, and the annual traffic capacity of Shanghai Pudong will reach to 80 million passengers after its completion.

About VariFlight

Founded in 2005, VariFlight -- with a vision of "live on time" -- is the leading brand providing aviation data services in China. Began with the issue of flight delays, VariFlight has spearheaded the realization of Chinese flight data transparency. In 2009, VariFlight released the first version of VariFlight mobile application and achieved the milestone of 100% coverage on China's domestic flights. VariFlight started working on international flights since 2010, and covered over 84% of the global commercial flight data at end-2015. VariFlight's data is used by over 300 million of travelers and thousands of class-leading businesses around the world. VariFlight has already become one of the most valuable technology brands in China.