On February 15, the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council held a press conference on epidemic prevention and control in post-Spring Festival travel rush. Li Jian, Deputy Administrator of CAAC, said at the press conference that there will not be a “return peak” as those in previous years, and that in the next stage, CAAC will further intensity and refine prevention and control measures in light of the new features and requirements of epidemic prevention and control to win the battle against the epidemic.

According to data released at the press conference, affected by the epidemic, the number of air passengers dropped sharply. From January 25 to February 14, civil aviation transported 470,000 passengers per day, a quarter of the number from the same period last year. According to forecasts, the downward trend will continue from February 15 to 23. The daily passenger traffic is expected to reach below 200,000, which is less than 1/10 of the traffic in the peak period, and the load factor will be less than 40%. In addition, in accordance with the overall arrangement of the national Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism, in order to effectively reduce travels, CAAC issued free refund policies four times in a row, which has minimized “non-rigid demand” for travel. Up to now, more than 20 million flight tickets worth over 20 billion yuan have been refunded free of charge by domestic and foreign airlines.

Li Jian noted that according to the above statistics, despite similarity with previous years in terms of “flow direction”, it is clear that the civil aviation industry will not witness a “return peak” as in previous years or an “overlaying” of passenger flows. In the next stage, passengers will be mainly students returning to schools and migrant workers returning for work. CAAC will continue to strengthen the monitoring of passenger traffic and make timely capacity adjustments in accordance with the new features and requirements of epidemic prevention and control. It will combine prevention and control measures, and will, through resolute prevention and precise control, do its utmost to prevent the virus from being brought into airports and onboard aircraft, to win the fight against the epidemic.

With regards to questions such as what measures are in place to deal with passengers who develop a fever on board aircraft and how disinfection will be performed, Li Jian said that CAAC has developed a technical guide on how to deal with passengers with fever, and special technical guidelines for aircraft disinfection are also in place. At present, cabin crews are all professionally trained, and all flights are equipped with relevant equipment such as airborne epidemic prevention kits. Passengers who develop a fever onboard aircraft will be seated in the “watching area” designated in the cabin and cabin crew will promptly take action in accordance with the procedures, and carry out disinfection of the “watching area” and aircraft terminal disinfection. Aircraft with passengers suspected of having coronavirus disease on board will be cleaned and thoroughly disinfected in accordance with relevant procedures after the flight. It is worth mentioning that the disinfectant used on board is specially developed for the novel coronavirus, and can effectively kill the virus and meet the airworthiness requirements of aircraft without causing damage to aircraft.

Regarding how to ensure the delivery of urgently needed supplies and personnel to the frontline, Li Jian said that since the outbreak of the pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus, CAAC has resolutely acted upon the guiding principles and requirements of the Party Central Committee and the State Council on epidemic prevention and control and actively coordinated with airlines to provide transport support for emergency assistance to Hubei under the overall arrangement of the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council. At the same time, CAAC gives full play to the role of general aviation in epidemic prevention and control, to perform “point-to-point” transportation of urgently needed medical staff and materials in small and multiple batches and carry out disinfection missions. The shortest time we used was one hour for the transport of “20,000 goggles” as required by Premier Li Keqiang; the largest scale of transport was 50 urgent charter flights arranged in two days to transport 6,288 medical staff to assist Wuhan; and the farthest mission was to fly to Durban, South Africa to ferry 54 tons of protective materials back home. In the next step, CAAC will encourage more domestic airlines to participate in the transport support for the epidemic prevention and control efforts, organize more forces to ensure the smooth flow of national support for Hubei through air, and require companies to give priority to the health and safety protection of frontline employees.

As of February 14, CAAC has organized and coordinated with 21 domestic airlines to dispatch 241 flights, with 29,000 people transported. Among them, 9 were charter flights which carried 1,185 Hubei passengers stranded overseas back home; 48 were charter flights for other overseas missions, including transportation of urgently needed supplies. In terms of general aviation, a total of 123 general aviation companies operated 608 general aircraft in 4,898 movements to transport medicines and supplies and carry out air spray disinfection and other tasks, with the flight time totaling 1,308 hours. Among them, 27 were general aviation companies based in Hubei, which dispatched 53 aircraft to transport 53 tons of materials and medicines in 213 movements, with the flight time totaling 201 hours.