US-China flights are a quarter of what they were pre-pandemic — here’s why

08.09.2024 - 14:34 / thepointsguy.com / Andrew Nocella

China was a booming opportunity when United Airlines launched flights to Chengdu a decade ago.

"China is a market that is an economy that continues to grow at a very strong pace. And there are many opportunities in China that you can develop markets with, particularly with the [Boeing] 787," Jim Compton, United's then-chief revenue officer, said in July 2014.

Chengdu was part of the Chicago-based carrier's "secondary Asian city strategy." It also included returning to Taipei, Taiwan, the same year the Chengdu service launched and, in 2016, adding the Chinese city of Xi'an to its map. The airline's future in China looked bright.

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United was not alone. The number of seats flown by all airlines between the U.S. and China grew by nearly 67% from 2014; it reached a peak of 5.3 million in 2018, according to Cirium Diio schedules. Airlines served the market with 5.2 million seats in 2019.

While there were complaints of competitive pressures — especially by U.S. airlines of their Chinese competitors — the area was widely seen as an opportunity.

Fast forward to today — one global pandemic and geopolitical adjustment later — and things look very, very different for airlines on U.S.-China routes.

"Demand for China is down dramatically than where it was in 2019," Andrew Nocella, United's current chief commercial officer, said in July. "And it's also difficult to fly there because of the lack of Russian overflight ability. So those two combinations just make this the new normal."

That "new normal," as Nocella put it, is one where flights are severely restricted to 100 a week (50 for each country's airlines). It's one where Russian airspace is closed to U.S. airlines but not to the country's Chinese counterparts. It's also one where fewer Americans are traveling to China than Chinese nationals to the U.S.

And United's Chengdu flight? It hasn't operated in four years.

David Yu knows firsthand what it's like to fly between the U.S. and China. A professor of finance at New York University Shanghai and the chair of Asia Aviation Valuation Advisors, he flies back and forth between the Washington, D.C., area and Shanghai frequently.

When asked about the experience, Yu's first reaction was: "It costs a lot."

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The high cost is the result of scarce supply. U.S. airlines are flying just 39 weekly nonstop flights, and their Chinese counterparts are flying 50 flights for 89 total, Cirium Diio schedules show. Before the coronavirus pandemic, there were around 340 weekly flights — nearly four times more than now.

American Airlines serves Shanghai daily from its Dallas-Fort