China's civil aviation industry achieved a total turnover volume of 8.46 billion tonne-kilometers in December 2016, a year-on-year growth of 15.1%, according to the monthly traffic statistics released Monday by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

The statistics shows that passenger numbers jumped 14.5% to 40.4 million. The number of passengers travelling on domestic and international flights increased 14.4% and 15.8% respectively to 36.11 million and 4.3 million, with those travelling on Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan routes dropping 3.4% from a year earlier to 798,000.

Chinese airlines handled 651,000 tonnes of cargo and mail in December, up 10.7% year on year. Cargo traffic saw a growth of 10.4% on domestic routes, with 11.3% growth on international routes.

The passenger load factor rose 2.3 percentage point year on year to 81.1% and the freight load factor increased 1.9 percentage points to 73%.

The aircraft utilization rate remained stable at 9.1 hours per day. The aircraft utilization rate was 9.2 hours per day for medium and large aircraft and 6.5 hours per day for small aircraft.

During the full-year of 2016, Chinese airlines carried up to 487.76 million passengers, up 11.8% over a year earlier.