The Civil Aviation Administration of China ("CAAC") has recently released the Administrative Measures for the Flight Schedules of Civil Aviation (the "Measures"), with effect from April 1, 2018.
The Measures clearly provide for the definition, administrative approaches, objectives and principles of flight schedules, basic rules for designing flight schedules, the qualification of priority based on the flight schedule history, implementation rates of flight schedules, and others, and adjust the regulatory authorities for flight schedules and their duties, regulatory items, etc. In particular, as to the rules on how to quantify the prioritized allocation of flight schedules, the Measures expressly state that the sequence of prioritized allocation shall be determined in a descending order according to the product of multiplying the allocation base of each airline by the allocation coefficient for the efficiency of flight schedules, and that the air carriers shall select the flight schedules from the pool of flight schedules, according to the said sequence of prioritized allocation. With regard to the category-based administration of flight schedules, the Measures state that the administration shall be based on three categories of airports, i.e. airports for primal coordination, airports for auxiliary coordination and airports for non-coordination functions, and the timetable of an airport for primal coordination is further divided into the flight schedule for international flights and the flight schedule for domestic flights.