China's civil aviation fleet exceeds 3,700

BEIJING - China had a total of 3,722 civil aircraft at the end of June this year, said the latest statistics released by China's civil aviation authorities.

China has seen a strengthening civil aviation industry thanks to continuous growth in various aspects, such as the fleet size and total transport turnover, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said.

Besides the expanding aircraft fleet, China has also made efforts to enhance its infrastructure to sustain the growth of the civil aviation industry. By the end of June, China's total number of civil airports reached 236.

In the first half of 2019, the country's civil aviation industry handled a total of 320 million passenger trips, up 8.5 percent year-on-year.

The country's civil aviation industry has also realized a remarkable continuous safe flight operation of 106 months, as of this June.

China's civil aviation authorities have been continuously enhancing the development quality of the industry with steady safety control and by upgrading services. All of these efforts sustained steady and continuous growth, the CAAC said.

Amid increasing flights and extreme weather conditions, the flight on-time performance reached 80.35 percent in the first half of 2019.

The CAAC forecast that China's civil aviation industry will realize annual passenger transport of 680 million in 2019, representing an 11 percent year-on-year increase.

China is now the world's second-largest civil aviation market. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) forecast that China is expected to become the world's largest by the mid-2020s.