Starting from 4 PM on March 1st, AirAsia will officially launch a three-day ticket promotion. All direct flights departing from China will start from 88 yuan at the lowest, plus taxes and fees only about 300 yuan.

As the largest low-cost airline in Southeast Asia, AirAsia has always been one of the advantages of cheap prices, and there were naturally many AirAsia fans waiting in front of their computers yesterday afternoon to grab tickets. However, some consumers revealed that just after 4 o 'clock to grab a special ticket of 317 yuan in Guangzhou -- Kuala Lumpur, and then want to grab a 289 yuan Guangzhou -- Bangkok has been searched.

Behind the rush for special tickets is a surge in demand for outbound travel after the control policy changes, as well as still high fares on many international routes. Especially for long-haul routes from Europe and the United States, the price is still in the tens of thousands of yuan, far from the thousands of yuan roundtrip before the epidemic.

Behind the high international ticket prices

With the implementation of "Class B and B Conduits", the popularity of entry and exit is increasing, but the current number of inbound and outbound flights has not increased correspondingly fast.

The latest data from Ctrip shows that in the past two weeks, the popularity of ticket searches has reached about 80% of the level in the same period of 2019, but the number of outbound flights is still less than 20% of the level in the same period of 2019.

Airasia, for example, operated 39 routes in China before the pandemic, with more than 320 flights a week, but has only resumed 20 routes.

Another example is Spring Airlines. Before the epidemic, there were 162 flights a week to Thailand. Now, there are only 62 flights a week.

The reason for the slow growth of international flight volume is that, on the one hand, due to the limited security capacity of many foreign airports, the three-year epidemic has caused a serious loss of airport staff, and it takes time to rerecruit and train them. On the other hand, it takes time to negotiate and approve traffic rights in different countries, and the increase of flights is not up to the airlines themselves.

This is also a major difficulty faced by many Southeast Asian countries. However, compared with Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States, the number of flights from China to Southeast Asian countries has grown rapidly, which is directly reflected in the price of air tickets.

Flights to and from the Philippines, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia are significantly lower. Prices on European routes are little changed from a month ago, and prices on U.S. routes remain high. In Shanghai, where there are relatively many flights to the US, the ticket price to the US in March was around 10,000 yuan. The ticket price between Guangzhou and Los Angeles was 35,108 yuan on March 4, 83,063 yuan on March 11, and the ticket price between Beijing and Los Angeles was 84,584 yuan on March 5.

Policy relaxation is good for international shift increase

Currently, the number of flights between China and the United States has not been increased even after the lifting of the five-to-one flight restriction policy, and the increase is still to be determined by the negotiation of traffic rights between the two countries.

The higher fares in Japan and South Korea are related to previous restrictions on flights from China. Just a few days ago, Japan announced that it would relax a series of entry restrictions on China from March 1. The coronavirus detection measures for passengers from China will be changed from the current total screening to random screening, and airlines will be allowed to increase the number of flights between China and Japan.

Previously, flights from the Chinese mainland to Japan were restricted to Tokyo's Narita and Osaka's Kansai airports. After the lifting of overtime restrictions, Chinese airlines will be able to resume more flights to and from Tokyo's Haneda/Nagoya/Fukuoka/Hokkaido, and the number of flights between China and Japan is also expected to increase significantly.

According to Ctrip's platform, visa orders from mainland tourists to Japan have increased 213 percent month-on-month since February. The number of searches for products in Japan on Ctrip's platform increased 76 percent month-on-month that night after the news of the relaxed entry inspection was announced yesterday.

Starting from March 1, many countries no longer require nucleic acid inspection in China. The Chinese embassies in New Zealand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Hungary have issued a notice allowing people aboard direct flights from these countries to take antigen tests instead of nucleic acid tests starting from March 1.

Countries that have relaxed nucleic acid testing in China are all on the list of target countries for the first batch of pilot outbound group Tours, which means it will be easier to travel to and return to these countries in the future.