China's air transporting industry slows down

BEIJING - China's air transport industry has registered a single-digit growth rate this year due to the global economic meltdown and domestic airspace restrictions, a top civil aviation official said.

The air transport industry achieved an estimated total air traffic (including passenger and cargo traffic) of 57.4 billion ton-kilometer this year, up 6.6 percent from that in 2010, according to statistics released by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) on Monday.

It is the first single-digit growth since 2003 when the industry was hit by the SARS epidemic - the industry experienced double-digit growth from 2004 through 2010.