Chinese flight bookings rise by 20% ahead of April holiday break despite soaring airfares

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By Ralph Jennings

Published March 31, 2026

Global instability fails to deter Chinese holidaymakers with airlines selling 2.04 million tickets in the lead-up to Ching Ming Festival

Flight bookings in China have grown 20 per cent year on year ahead of the annual Ching Ming Festival holiday that starts this weekend and follows public school breaks in much of the country – despite higher airfares on account of rising fuel prices.

Holiday bookings had reached 2.04 million flight tickets as of Thursday, state broadcaster CCTV said, citing figures from data provider TravelSky Technology. CCTV’s Sunday report said cross-border holiday flight bookings inbound and outbound stood at 600,000, up 12 per cent year on year.

Spring breaks for public junior and secondary schools in many parts of China will add April 1 to 3 to the April 4 to 6 public holiday, the broadcaster said, adding that the number of intended air passengers from March 31 to April 1 had risen 1.6 times compared with the previous two days.

Ching Ming Festival, also known as tomb-sweeping day, is traditionally a time to pay tribute to ancestors.

The longer April holiday extended by the spring break offers an opportunity for some families to bring forward their May Day travel plans.

Previous airline annoucements that domestic flight fuel surcharges, which are adjusted routinely on the 5th of each month, will increase on April 5th has turned this year’s Ching Ming Festival holiday into a low-price window period for long-distance travel. Advance flight bookings for China’s annual May Day break have also increased by nearly 20 per cent over the same period of 2025 because of the potential increases, CCTV said.

Spots in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Sichuan provinces in particular would gain from this year’s bookings, the broadcaster added. Decades-old Hong Kong joss-paper shop prepares for Ching Ming

Singapore was the most popular destination outside China as of March 23, compared with a month earlier and since the start of the US-Israel conflict in Iran, the travel marketing and technology firm China Trading Desk noted.

It said bookings to Singapore had risen 19.4 per cent over that month, compared with Vietnam in second place at 12.6 per cent and Thailand in third at 9.4 per cent. The firm’s CEO Subramania Bhatt cited “a lot more uptick” in the number of flights from China to Southeast Asia since the Iran war broke out.

The three Southeast Asian countries offer relatively short flights from China as fuel price increases raised airfares.

Global fuel prices have surged because of the conflict and the subsequent shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, a key passageway for the Middle East’s oil and gas exports. Like peers elsewhere in the world, Chinese airlines have raised fares since US-Israeli strikes on Iran started on February 28.

“The fuel surcharge has started to increase on Chinese airlines, but is still palatable for short-haul flights to Southeast Asia,” Bhatt said.

Outbound travel intent in China has “softened slightly” overall for the months ahead, China Trading Desk said in a March 27 newsletter.

But ahead of China’s annual May Day break this year, advance flight bookings have increased by nearly 20 per cent over the same period of 2025 because of potential increases in fuel surcharges, CCTV said.