A chartered plane operated by Spring Airlines is poised to take off from a Kunming airport on February 18, 2020. (Photos: Spring Airlines)

An Airbus 320 plane touched down at Shanghai Hongqiao airport at 6:35 pm Tuesday. It was the first chartered flight operated by Spring Airlines, a Shanghai-based low cost carrier, to take stranded migrant workers back to work. 

The 180 passengers, departing from Southwest China’s Yunnan Province, took on eight coaches arranged in advance by Huzhou, around 150 kilometers from Shanghai. They’re expected to appear in local plants on Wednesday.

As the 17-day Lunar New Year national holiday ended on February 9, Chinese manufacturers scrambled to summon employees who left production bases to celebrate new year in their hometowns commonly thousands of kilometers away. 

However, the traffic restrictions, which were launched after the outbreak of COVID-19 to insulate people from contagion in transportation, also blocked migrant workers’ returning steps and disturbed factories’ post-holiday production plans. 

In normal years, the price-sensitive migrant workers preferred to make trips by train and they accounted for around 20 percent of total railway passengers during China’s busy new year travel season. China’s state railway authority estimated nearly half of 56 million migrant workers were still confined in their rural homes by the end of last Friday. 

Huzhou, a city in China’s prosperous coastal province of Zhejiang, fortunately suffered little impact from the epidemic with only 10 people confirmed infected so far. Compared to virus control, operation recovery is a more pressing task for the local government and business owners. 

After surveying demands of its two biggest employers, the Huzhou human resources department asked Spring Airlines to offer a chartered flight to airlift workers from Yunnan’s capital city Kunming. 

A total of 180 workers line up to board the plane at a Kunming airport on February 18, 2020, heading to factories in East China’s Zhejiang Province.

Before boarding, workers must obtain a health certificate, which would exempt them from a mandatory 14-day quarantine procedure after landing in Shanghai.

Spring Airlines said its crew conducted three body temperature checks for passengers throughout the service and disinfected the aircraft at the end of the mission.

China’s Ministry of Transport said there will be 120 million trips made by migrant workers for the rest of February, and another 100 million in March. 

Chinese airlines have the incentives to offer chartered flight service as they were forced to ground fleets due to plummeting travelers and closures of airport terminals in some cities, airline analyst Lin Zhijie told the China Business Network.

Since January 21, airline operators have processed 20 million ticket cancellations due to the virus outbreak, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC). CAAC believes the bleak air market will continue through February. 

One day ahead of the Spring Airlines’ operation, Zhejiang’s Loong Air, a Hangzhou-headquartered cargo airline, had transported 154 migrant workers to another Zhejiang township from Southwest China’s Sichuan province via a chartered flight. The fare of the two trips was mainly paid by the local governments.

As of Tuesday, at least 10 Chinese airlines have announced they’ve launched chartered flights for migrant workers.