A number of Chinese airports have started to cancel domestic flights from Monday, in a bid to control the spreading of the coronavirus as a new wave of the Omicron variant hit the country.
Data from Chinese flight tracking platform Feichangzhun showed that the flights at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Shanghai Hongqiao Airport have been largely cancelled on Tuesday. As of 4:30 pm on Monday, both airports had cancelled more than 70 percent of inbound and outbound flights.
Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport in South China’s Guangdong Province took similar measures. As of 5:00 pm on Monday, more than 80 percent of inbound and outbound flights were cancelled.
Shenyang Taoxian International Airport in Northeast China’s Liaoning said on Tuesday on its Wechat account that the airport had cancelled all flights and that access to passenger terminals had been suspended, in line with the local government’s new anti-COVID-19 policy.
Ningbo in East China’s Zhejiang Province announced that due to the epidemic, all flights to Beijing had been cancelled from Tuesday with no date for resumption of services provided.
In response to the measures aimed at reducing large scale travel, some domestic aviation service providers have started offering free ticket refund service on Monday. Some flight ticket agencies have reportedly received notification from China Eastern Airlines that passengers who bought the domestic tickets before March 20 with a scheduled flight date from March 14 and April 17 do not need to pay for a refund.
Since the beginning of March, a total of 27 provincial-level localities reported COVID-19 cases, with the number of cases climbing to over 10,000 from between March 1 to 13, the National Health Commission said on Monday.
Shanghai Pudong International Airport Photo: VCG
