Market Overview: Scotland to China

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Last year I made a series of presentations about market share across Scotland to the ten largest inbound tourist markets as identified by Visit Scotland. Now that 2024 has concluded and we have a years worth of data I thought it would be a good idea to revisit each of these markets in a bit more detail.

A disclaimer is needed here, I have done this from an airport neutral point of view, and it is very important to remember that just because a load factor is high, that does not necessarily mean that yields are high.

This particular post is focusing specifically on the Scotland-China market, which is the fifth largest long haul market to Scotland as of 2023.

For those unfamiliar with the route networks and airlines below is a summary of the routes and airlines that operated flights in 2024;

• Edinburgh to Beijing with Hainan Airlines

Unlike my previous posts in this series, the format will be different due to the fact that since 2015 there has only been one route and airline operating flights to China from Scotland.

Passenger Numbers By Month

As witnessed in the graph above, China remains a highly seasonal destination from Edinburgh Airport, with Hainan Airlines only operating flights in the 2024 summer season.

As of the time of writing, Hainan Airlines only seasonal destination in Europe is Edinburgh, however, as will be explained later in the post, the airline is planning to operate a twice weekly service this winter.

Passenger Numbers By Year

Passenger numbers between Scotland and China were slow to recover post-pandemic in terms of the number of years taken, largely due to China being one of the last countries to lift restrictions on international travel after the pandemic.

Another point worth considering as well is that before 2020 the route operated in a triangle pattern with Dublin Airport (this means the aircraft used to fly Beijing-Dublin-Edinburgh-Beijing or Beijing-Edinburgh-Dublin-Beijing depending on the day) and crucially was operated by a smaller aircraft;

Before the pandemic the flights were operated by a 288 seater Boeing 787-9, since the route resumed in 2023 flights have been operated by the larger Airbus A330-300 with 303 seats.

Summer 2025 Operations

Summer 2025 operations for this route have changed since the Start of Season Report for Edinburgh Airport was published in March.

Initially the airline planned to operate 240 movements (equivalent to 120 round trips) and provide 70,080 seats, an increase of 52% on last year.

The airline planned to increase the length of their season, moving the resumption date from the end of May to the beginning of April as well as increasing the frequency of flights.

However, Aeroroutes.com has since reported that the airline has removed a number of flights in the second quarter of 2025.

With these changes factored into the initial schedule the airline will now operate 230 movements (equivalent to 115 round trips) and provide 67,050 seats.

• This still represents an increase in seats of 45.3% over Summer 2024.

However, upon further investigation of the Start of Season Report, it appears that the number of movements filed with ACL is not what is actually operating;

As can be seen from the above spreadsheet, the ACL Start of Season Report (outside of the previously mentioned period), actually overstates the number of flights operating in March, April and the first half of May.

	Planned	Actual
Movements	240	204
Seats	70,808	60,228

At the end of the day however, it is worth highlighting again (before it ends up on forums), that Hainan is still increasing capacity above its S24 levels, and is still increasing the length of its operating season on Scotland’s only direct air route to China.

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Winter 2025 Operations

For the first time, Hainan Airlines plans to operate a twice weekly service between Beijing and Edinburgh using a 303 seat Airbus A330-300.

This will be the first time there has ever been a winter service between the two countries.