Tan Xiaomi

LOCAL airlines are to add an extra 500 flights during the two-month summer vacation, the city’s airport has confirmed.

Detailed flight schedules are available on Shenzhen International Airport’s Web site, www.szairport.com, with information in Chinese.

More than 40,000 passengers departed from the city’s airport yesterday, including more than 2,000 children joining tour groups or student summer camps. The airport expects the number of passengers to keep rising until the end of August, when tens of thousands of local students end their annual summer vacations.

“Flights to popular travel destinations including Chengdu, Chongqing, Guilin and Sanya are fully booked, while those to other major cities are more than 80 percent sold out,” said Li Zhen, an airport spokesman.

“We have also seen a large number of unaccompanied children aged 5 to 12 traveling from Shenzhen to their hometowns in other mainland cities,” Li said, adding that most airline operators had provided special services to cater for them.

“China Southern Airlines will check children’s health status with their parents, and provide special care for sick children. Parents will also get text messages after their children arrive at their destination,” he said.

The Shenzhen Railway Station also said that it would operate additional high-speed bullet trains between Shenzhen and Guangzhou daily during the summer travel peak.

The railway station says there may be a shortage of rail tickets to popular destinations like Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Wuhan, Wuchang and Zhengzhou.

The provincial rail service provider expects more than 27 million people will travel by train during the summer travel peak which will last 62 days. Most of the passengers will be students, tourists and migrant workers. The daily passenger flow is expected to reach 485,000 at the end of August when people return to Shenzhen.