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Jan. 17 (NBD) -- China's civil aviation enterprises unveiled their operational statistics for December 2017 on Monday, and three major airlines saw a sharp rise in number of passengers last year.

According to reports for the whole year of 2017 released by airline companies, China Southern Airlines won top ranking in the list of domestic airlines' annual passenger numbers with a total of 126 million passengers, increasing by 10.19 percent year on year, and China Eastern Airlines ranked second with an estimated number of 111 million passengers, a year-on-year rise of 5.1 percent. 

NBD noticed that the metric for Air China climbed 5.1 percent to reach 102 million, up from 96.594 million in 2016, which makes it the third Chinese airline that carried over 100 million passengers in a year. 

In 2014, China Southern Airlines became the first Chinese airline that crossed the 100-million passenger mark. Another airline, China Eastern Airlines reached the landmark achievement two year later.

Besides, other airlines such as Spring Airlines, Hainan Airlines and Juneyao Air had growing numbers of passengers in 2017 as well. 

All the rising numbers indicate the development of China's civil aviation industry. According to the data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, from 2012 to 2016, the annual passenger traffic of Chinese airlines has increased from 319 million to 488 million, with a compound annual growth rate of 11.21 percent.

But the passenger load factors of the three largest major airlines dropped in December 2017 compared with a month earlier. The higher load factor means the better use of the airline's capacity and resources.

Qi Qi, expert in the civil aviation industry, explained that the load factors fluctuate due to the increased capacity and different travelling plans of tourists.

Industrial Securities said in its industry review report published in December last year that the fourth quarter is the traditional off season for airlines, therefore the average number of flights per day is obviously lower than that in the busy season.

To cope with the low season, airlines took measures including lowering ticket price last month to attract customers and improve their load factors.

It is noted that the annual average passenger load factor of global airlines hit a record 80.5 percent in 2016. Despite the monthly decline in December 2017, the load factors of China's three major airlines were almost equal to that of global average.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn