State-Owned Carriers Sweep China Airport Slot Auction

China's state-owned airlines were the biggest winners in the country's first auction for airport landing slots, casting doubt over the effectiveness of efforts to reform the slot-assignment process.

China earlier this month said it would put slots for additional 2016 domestic flights at Guangzhou Baiyun Airport up for sale, in a new move predicted to give smaller private airlines a fairer opportunity to win some desired slots from dominant state-owned carriers.

The state-run China Daily newspaper said nine airport slots were sold on Wednesday to the country's four largest airlines and their affiliates, including China Eastern, and units of Hainan Airlines, Air China and China Southern.

A statement from the Civil Aviation Administration of China said 34 airlines had taken part in the auction, which raised more than CNY550 million yuan in total.

"The auction was too expensive for us," the China Daily quoted a senior executive from an unnamed private carrier as saying.

Industry executives, such as Wang Zhenghua, the chairman of China's biggest budget carrier Spring Airlines, have said the allocation system is unfair to private airlines as state-owned airlines were allocated all the good time slots.