China's airports driving digital expansion

BEIJING -- China's civil aviation industry is driving new developments in digital innovation, according to the country's civil aviation authorities.

China's major airlines and 229 of its 238 civil airports had promoted e-boarding facilities by the end of last year, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

The civil aviation industry, especially in the busier airports, is accelerating digital technologies to better serve the country's surging air transport needs.

By the end of 2019, 71.6 percent of domestic passengers used electronic devices to self-check in at 37 airports with an annual passenger throughput exceeding 10 million.

Digital technologies also helped cut delays at airports. The on-time performance rate of all civil flights amounted to 81.65 percent last year as the number of flights continued to rise.

The CAAC has been promoting new technologies such as facial recognition, automatic vending and luggage check-in, and intelligent inquiry services.

In 2020, the CAAC will promote advanced digital technologies, such as radio frequency identification devices (RFID) in luggage tracking and airport data-sharing.

China is the world's second-largest civil aviation market, with 660 million passenger trips last year, a year-on-year increase of 7.9 percent.