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Punctuality rates among Chinese airlines - long the bane of passengers - improved slightly last year, after falling for three consecutive years.
The timekeeping rate on China's mainland increased to 77.2 percent last year, up 1.4 percent on 2010, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said in its annual statistics report yesterday.
Domestic airlines flew 2.35 million flights last year, of which 1.82 million were on schedule, the report said.
However, passengers have complained that they experience far more flight delays than official figures indicate.
Officials explained that was because the administration defines a delay as up until the aircraft doors are closed, rather than the time of take-off.
It justified this by saying that airlines should not be blamed for delays if they have their doors closed and are ready to depart on time.
Once the doors are closed, responsibility shifts to air traffic control to get the planes away to schedule.
Many aviation insiders say the on-schedule rate would be far worse if the authorities defined the delay up until take-off.
China Consumer Association statistics show that of all complaints last year, those against airlines grew most - with flight delays topping them.
Shanghai had the second-worst record of flight delays among Chinese cities, with only Guangzhou in the southern Guangdong Province below it, according to a survey by an online ticket platform.
Li Jiaxiang, director of the administration, said airlines are mainly responsible for 40 percent of flight delays - even though they frequently blame air-traffic control or the weather.
"The cause of many delays is airlines arranging flights so tightly that maintenance and cleaning work are not finished on time," Li said.
The regulator will take measures this year to increase the punctuality rate by two percentage points to about 80 percent for domestic flights, he said.
Li said that if carriers have recurrent delays on certain routes, the regulator will stop them from flying those routes.
Li cited China's relative dearth of airports as another reason for frequent delays. The country has a total of 180 airports, compared with 17,000 in the United States.
The central government will invest about 20 billion yuan (US$3.16 billion) per year to build 72 new airports and expand 101 others by 2015 to meet the increasing demand, Li said.
