Chinese airports gear up as the annual Golden Week travel rush draws near

Passengers queue to check in at Beijing Capital International Airport on September 28, 2025. Photo: Tu Lei/ GT

With China's Golden Week holiday rapidly approaching, airports and airlines across the country are implementing comprehensive measures to accommodate the anticipated surge in passenger travel.

Beijing Capital International Airport is expected to handle 1.67 million passenger trips during the holiday, with daily average reaching 208,800, and facilitate 9,903 flights, averaging 1,238 per day, according to the information the airport shared with the Global Times on Sunday.

With the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival coinciding this year, there is strong travel demand for vacations and family visits. Popular destinations include Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Sanya, as well as Tokyo, Osaka, London, and Seoul, the airport said.

Beijing Daxing International Airport also said it has scheduled 7,925 flights from October 1 to 8, and is expected to handle 1.308 million passenger trips during this period. Compared to the same period last year, flight volume and passenger traffic are projected to increase by 4.6 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively.

For international and regional routes, popular destinations include Osaka, Seoul, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur and Moscow. China Southern Airlines will resume non-stop flights between Beijing Daxing and Tehran on October 3.

Such move came amid the background as the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival coincide this year, creating an extended 8-day-long holiday that runs from October 1 to 8.

Chinese carriers are also in preparation, such as China Eastern Airlines, including its subsidiaries Shanghai Airlines and China United Airlines said on Sunday that they will deploy a fleet of 816 passenger aircraft, including 11 domestically-produced C919 jets. The airline plans to operate 3,174 flights per day on average, serving 988 passenger routes that connect 246 cities across 37 countries.

For international and regional routes, China Eastern plans to operate over 440 daily flights on average, representing a year-on-year increase of 10.18 percent. The airline is launching a new Shanghai Pudong-Barcelona route and increasing flight frequency on international routes such as Shanghai Pudong-Kota Kinabalu, Shanghai Pudong-Kuala Lumpur. The carrier said the ticket bookings for many of these routes surpassing the levels seen during the same period last year.

China Southern Air Holding Company said it has planned to add over 2,700 extra flights and operate a total of approximately 48,000 flights between September 26 and October 10, ensuring smooth travel for passengers during the holiday period.

On the international front, China Southern recently launched new routes including Guangzhou-Riyadh, Guangzhou-Wuhan-Moscow, Beijing Daxing-Doha, and Shenzhen-Da Nang. During the holiday period, the airline will also increase flight frequencies on routes from Guangzhou to Phuket and Kota Kinabalu, as well as from Changchun, Shenyang, and Dalian to Seoul.

As China gears up to celebrate both National Day and the Mid-Autumn Festival or Moon Festival, the country is expected to experience a record surge in both inbound and outbound passenger traffic during the upcoming holiday period, according to a CCTV News report on Sunday.

Demand for cross-border travel is surging, driven by favorable policies such as visa exemptions and the increasing resumption of international flights.

The National Immigration Administration predicted that the average daily number of inbound and outbound travelers at major Chinese ports will exceed 2 million during the holiday period, said the report.