Recently, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) released the Statistical Bulletin of Civil Aviation Industry Development in 2025 (hereinafter referred to as the Statistical Bulletin), which presents the development of China's civil aviation industry in 2025 from 12 aspects, including commercial aviation, general aviation and low-altitude economy, transport efficiency and economic benefits, aviation safety and service quality, education and technological innovation. According to the Statistical Bulletin, in 2025, civil aviation operations remained stable and controllable, major transport operation indicators reached record highs, international passenger and cargo routes saw rapid growth, the low-altitude economy flourished, and the industry effectively withstood external shocks. The high-quality development of civil aviation stood at a new level, successfully concluding the 14th Five-Year Plan.
Throughout the course of 2025, the industry completed a total transport turnover of 164.083 billion tonne-kilometers, passenger turnover of 1,399.306 billion passenger-kilometers, and cargo and mail turnover of 41.310 billion tonne-kilometers, representing a year-on-year increase of 10.5%, 8.3%, and 16.7%, respectively. The industry handled 770.1468 million passenger trips and 10.1721 million tonnes of cargo and mail, up 5.5% and 13.3% year on year, respectively, with international passenger and cargo transport volumes both growing by over 20%. Commercial airlines in the industry recorded 14.5505 million flight hours and 5.547 million takeoffs, up 5.3% and 3.1% year on year, respectively. The average daily utilization rate of registered transport aircraft was 9.11 hours, an increase of 0.22 hours over the previous year. In 2025, the regularity rate for domestic passenger flights was 91.09%, with an average delay of 7 minutes, a reduction of 3 minutes from the previous year; 85.8% of flights at airports with annual throughput of over 10 million passengers were parked at contact stands, up 2.0 percentage points from the previous year. According to preliminary statistics, the industry achieved total operating revenue of 1,143.64 billion yuan in 2025, an increase of 3.0% year on year. Fixed asset investment in civil aviation totaled 217.33 billion yuan, of which 125.03 billion yuan was invested in capital construction and technological transformation, marking the sixth consecutive year of exceeding 100 billion yuan.
By the end of 2025, China had 65 commercial airlines, 4,574 commercial aircraft (including 220 domestically manufactured aircraft), 5,488 scheduled flight routes, and 261 domestic cities (excluding Hong Kong SAR, Macao SAR, and Taiwan region) with scheduled flights. Chinese air carriers operated international scheduled flights to 147 cities in 65 countries.
By the end of 2025, there were 270 domestic commercial airports (excluding Hong Kong SAR, Macao SAR, and Taiwan region), a net increase of 7 from the end of the previous year. Among these, 41 airports handled 10 million or more passenger trips annually, and 68 airports handled 10,000 tonnes or more of cargo and mail annually. In 2025, national commercial airports completed 1.529 billion passenger trips, 21.8642 million tonnes of cargo and mail throughput, and 12.4475 million aircraft movements, representing a year-on-year increase of 4.8%, 9.0%, and 0.4%, respectively.
By the end of 2025, China had signed 132 air service agreements with other countries or regions, established bilateral airworthiness relations with 32 countries or regions, and maintained 201 currently valid bilateral airworthiness documents.
In terms of general aviation and the low-altitude economy, by the end of 2025, the total number of registered general aviation aircraft reached 3,140, the number of registered general aviation airports nationwide totaled 513, and the total flight hours of general aviation for the year reached 1.219 million hours. By the end of 2025, the number of registered drones across the industry reached 3.287 million, an increase of 51.0% over the end of the previous year; the cumulative flight hours of drones for the year reached 45.3029 million hours, a year-on-year increase of 69.89%; there were 46 low-altitude flight service stations covering 23 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government).
Regarding regulatory development, in 2025, the Civil Aviation Law of the People's Republic of China was comprehensively revised, which was reviewed and adopted by the 19th Session of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress. The revised law will take effect on July 1, 2026.
