China Eastern Airlines suffered losses of $2.7 billion in January-June 2022

China's second largest airline, China Eastern Airlines, suffered losses of 18.73 billion yuan ($2.7 billion) in the first half of this year, which is 259.75% more than in the same period of 2021.

Such data is contained in the company's financial report published on Tuesday.
The negative indicator for January-June was also for total revenue. It fell by 44.24% year-on-year and amounted to 19.35 billion yuan ($2.8 billion). In the pre-pandemic 2019, the airline's profit at the same time amounted to 3.2 billion yuan (about $ 470 million).
Local air carriers have been suffering serious losses since the beginning of the spread of COVID-19. This is due to a serious reduction in the volume of passenger air traffic against the background of periodically introduced lockdowns and other anti-weed restrictions. The losses of the entire Chinese civil aviation industry in the first half of 2022 amounted to more than 108.9 billion yuan (about $16 billion), which exceeded the losses for the whole of 2021. According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the accumulated losses for the entire duration of the anti-weed restrictions since 2020 are already approaching 300 billion yuan (about $44.1 billion). At the same time, until 2020, the civil aviation industry in the country was profitable for 11 years in a row.
In the first half of the year, passenger traffic in China decreased by 36.7% year-on-year and amounted to 118 million people, and the number of daily flights halved to 8 thousand. Cargo and mail shipments fell by 87.5%, to 3 million tons, writes TASS.