The news isn’t getting too much better for airports, including Washington Dulles International, that would like to see service to China restored to levels approaching the pre-pandemic era.
The number of fliers between the U.S. and China for the first seven months of the year was still down 76 percent from the same period in 2019, according to figures recorded by the U.S. Department of Transportation and reported by the Airlines for America trade group.
That ongoing freefall has been due to a number of factors: limitations in service still put in place by the Chinese government, a decline in demand and the prohibition on American carriers (though not Chinese ones) using Russian airspace, which often eliminates the most cost-efficient routing between the two countries.
While China had been the seventh largest international destination from the U.S. before the pandemic, it currently sits at 22nd.
Officials with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority might discuss the situation at the body’s upcoming board of directors meeting, slated for Sept. 18.
During a previous update in May, the authority said that service from Dulles to and from China was running at just 9 percent of pre-COVID levels, compared to a rebound of 89 percent to non-China destinations in Asia.
(Those figures were based on data from Innovate Airline Services, reported by Diio.)
While China, and a few other parts of Asia, remain a challenge at Dulles, service to Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Canada is all running ahead of pre-pandemic levels.
