China-Japan traffic bottoms out but faces massive challenge; Spring Airlines to launch new routes

Several political actions sparked extreme anti-Japan sentiment in Sep-2012 that saw the air traffic market between the two nations lose nine years of growth as 31%, or 175,000 monthly seats, were taken out of the market. The situation lasted longer and more profoundly than airlines initially expected as they planned for about half of the lost market to rebound by the end of 2012.

Instead, that may not occur until the middle of 2013 at the earliest. Since capacity fell in Nov-2012, the market has regained 1ppt of the lost traffic, indicating a likely bottoming out. Yet further effects have expanded beyond mainland China, slightly impacting Hong Kong-Japan traffic as well.

So it is all the more significant that China's only LCC, Spring Airlines, is planning a fairly aggressive growth campaign for mid-2013 between China and Japan, opening new cities on either end, including the under-served secondary cities that have much growth to be unlocked.