(Reuters) – SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China Southern Airlines has planned two Boeing (NYSE: BA) 737 MAX flights for Friday, according to its mobile app. If completed, these flights would be the first commercial services for the model operated by a Chinese carrier since its grounding in March 2019.
The app displayed planned domestic flights from the southern city of Guangzhou to Zhengzhou and from Guangzhou to Wuhan.
China Southern had previously slated a return to commercial service for the 737 MAX in October 2022, however, the aircraft was not utilised on the flights scheduled.
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Boeing said that it will let the airlines talk about flight operations, and China Southern did not respond to a request for comment right away.
Following deadly disasters in Indonesia and Ethiopia in March 2019, the 737 MAX was grounded worldwide. However, with the exception of China and Russia, the aircraft has now been modified, and pilot training has resumed.
In October 2022, foreign airlines began flying the 737 MAX to China.
According to 2019 statistics from Cirium, Chinese airlines owned 97 of the aircraft prior to the grounding.
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Boeing said in October that another 138 planes made for Chinese airlines were in the United States awaiting delivery, but that it had begun remarketing the jets to other airlines due to the lack of indications that Chinese airlines would take the planes in the near future.
China’s domestic aviation market was slow in 2022 because COVID-19 outbreaks led to periodic lockdowns. Since the country’s zero-COVID policy was recently ended, the market has started to recover in a big way.
China expects that 2.1 billion people will travel by road, rail, sea, and air during the Lunar New Year holidays. This is more than double the 1.05 billion people who travelled during the same time last year.
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