It is no surprise Gao Min prefers a 40-minute flight to a bumpy seven-hour bus trip when she leaves Guiyang, capital of southwest China's Guizhou Province, to head home to Songtao county.
A bus ticket costs 160 yuan, but air tickets offered by budget carriers like Spring Airlines, cost only slightly more and greatly shorten travel time. "Air travel has become easier since more routes opened. It's become the new fashionable way to travel," she said.
In the rugged terrain of China's west, especially since the arrival of low-cost airlines, flying has almost become the norm. In Guizhou, for example, about 25 routes are now run by budget airlines including Spring, China United, and China Express.
Guizhou is one of the least developed provinces, with a monthly disposable income of less than 1,880 yuan. Most people can not afford high-priced air tickets. "The budget airline market has great potential in western regions, both for tourists and residents," said Ba Duoxun, director of Northwest Normal University tourism academy.
For people in western China, the most important factor is still the price, which is good news for small, low-cost airlines, he added. China has six budget airlines. Bigger airlines are also offering discounts on short-haul routes.
China's domestic budget aviation market makes up less than five percent of the total market, so it is still under-developed. "In Europe, budget airlines occupy eighty percent of the short-haul market, particularly trips under three hours," said Mao Yi, publicity director of Spring Airlines.
"Chinese budget airlines have great domestic potential to develop,but also in the international market including Japan, the Republic of Korea and southeastern Asian countries," he said. The market for budget airlines is expected to top 200 billion yuan by 2023, making the country a very important market, but it is not all blue skies.
Airlines face challenges from both customers and the bigger companies, which generally take up resources like flightgates and runway time, restricting the growth of budget competitors.
The domestic customers still need to understand the budget service model, which cuts service to reduce costs, said Mao Yi. "We will work harder on marketing and invest in infrastructure to improve our service and cut costs," he added.
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