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Railways gain ground as delays see passengers reluctant to fly
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Hu Jun used to fly economy class on China Eastern Airlines between Nanjing and Hohhot in Inner Mongolia on business related to his property investment firm. This summer, he changed his route, first taking a bullet train to Shanghai from Nanjing and then paying only half of his former airfare to fly to Hohhot. The whole journey took only about an hour longer.
The rail portion of the trip was free under a corporate tie-up between the airline and the railway operator. Flight connections at Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport are more frequent and have a better on-time rate than those at Nanjing Lukou Airport.
Hu said money wasn’t the only factor that caused him to switch to air-rail services.
The bullet train is never late, he said, and he can make business calls en route, which he can’t do on a plane.
“The air-rail service is comfortable and I don’t have to spend as much time sealed in an aircraft cabin on a flight that is delayed,” said Hu, 45, who travels about 10 times a year between Nanjing and Hohhot.
Collaboration between major Chinese carriers and railway operators is on the increase.
Both sides are finding it advantageous to offer better services by sharing passengers.
That’s particularly true as China expands its high-speed rail network and as long flight delays annoy the traveling public.
China Eastern Airlines began issuing joint tickets with high-speed railway operators in May 2012.
They enable passengers to use a combination of domestic flights and rail services to shorten travel times and cut costs. Passengers who fly into either of Shanghai’s two airports can transfer to convenient rail services to Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou in Jiangsu Province and to Ningbo in Zhejiang Province.
Air China followed suit last November, and local carrier Spring Airlines has also joined the air-rail program to expand services to all the major Yangtze Delta cities.
It wasn’t always like this. For years, airlines viewed the railways as bitter enemies in the competition for passengers, said Zhang Wu’an, a spokesman for Spring Airlines.
“However, the combined services area way of sharing the pie and can complement on another, especially when air travelers can conveniently transfer to trains,” Zhang said.
Transit points for rail and air passengers to change from one transport to the other have also been upgraded.
Free shuttle buses take passengers between Hongqiao Railway Station and Hongqiao Airport where most domestic flights take off as well as the Pudong Interntional Airport. Staff can also transfer luggage between the train and plane.
China Eastern and Air China have brought some 38,000 passengers to railways under air-rail programs this year, said Zhao Jun, deputy director of the Shanghai Railway Bureau.
Under a plan unveiled in 2008, China aims to have high-speed train systems on four north-south routes and four east-west lines by 2020, covering 90 percent of the population.
China Railway Corp, the state-owned rail operator, has invited tenders for 91 bullet trains that can run at 250 kilometers an hour. The company increased its 2013 fixed-asset budget by 10 billion yuan (US$1.63 billion) to 660 billion yuan, and will spend more than 50 billion yuan buying rolling stock, Xinhua news agency reported.
Despite a much-publicized 2011 accident that killed 40 people on the high-speed railway’s Wenzhou section, rail services remain popular with the Chinese.
The railways increased passenger numbers by 11 percent in the first half of 2013, compared with 4.8 percent gain for the whole of 2012, according to China Railway. It didn’t provide a breakdown for bullet-train users.
The high-speed train line between Beijing and Shanghai — the busiest airline route — carried 40 percent more people in its second year of operation by the end of June, according to Xinhua.
At the same time, Chinese airlines increased passengers by just 9.2 percent in each of the past two years, the slowest growth since 2006, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
Two of China’s major airlines reported declines in first-half net profits as slower economic growth cut domestic demand and high-speed rail attracted passengers fed up with increasing flight delays.
China Southern Airlines’ net profit fell 19 percent in the first six months to 344 million yuan, while China Eastern, the country’s second biggest carrier by passengers, saw a 23 percent drop.
“The drops in passenger numbers can be blamed mainly on the flight delays,” said Li Lei, an analyst at China Securities Co. High-speed rail has become a major competitor for airlines given the greater frequency of trains and far better on-time rates, he said.
That was especially true after a new high-speed train line opened late last year between Beijing in the north and Guangzhou in the south, connecting 28 cities en route.
“Now that we have the bullet train, who wants to fly?” said Liu Yueping, 50, who runs a company in central Hunan Province and travels frequently.
She finally ditched her two-year routine of flying business class on China Southern between the Hunan capital of Changsha and Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, switching to a bullet train this year.
Companies and government officials alike are heeding Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call to pare lavish spending, which has meant cutting travel budgets and taking trains instead of more expensive flights.
To enhance collaboration with ground transport, China Eastern initiated a new travel package in late August, offering a combination of air and bus tickets for passengers landing in Shanghai.
The services allow travelers to continue their journeys to nearby cities such as Suzhou and Wuxi by bus.
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