A plane takes off from Wuhan Tianhe International Airport in Wuhan, Hubei province. (Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn)

BEIJING -- China's civil air transport sector has achieved 10 years and one month of consecutive safe flight operations as of this September, according to the civil aviation authorities.

As of the end of September, the sector had seen a total of 86.69 million consecutive safe flight hours, according to statistics from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

China's civil aviation sector has achieved steady progress over the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020) with significant performance in both transport capacity and safe flight operations.

Over the 2016-2020 period, the civil aviation authorities unswervingly implemented the strategy of controlling quantity and adjusting structure to ensure the sustainability of the civil aviation industry, said the CAAC.

The CAAC has persistently enhanced safety management and infrastructure construction to sustain the civil aviation industry. It has also advanced reforms in multiple fields, such as airspace management, general aviation and airworthiness certification.

China maintained the world's second-largest civil aviation market, with 660 million passenger trips in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 7.9 percent, according to the CAAC.