By Alfred Chua2020-12-17T02:30:00+00:00 In their traffic results for October, China’s three largest carriers announced something few might have imagined half a year ago, when the country was in the throes of the coronavirus outbreak. The ‘Big Three’ — Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines — each announced new domestic route launches. Source: China Eastern China Eastern and other Chinese carriers have witnessed full domestic recovery, after bottoming out amid the coronavirus pandemic. What made it more significant for the carriers was that it was announced in piecemeal fashion; instead, each of the carriers rolled out more than 10 new routes, many of them between second and third-tier Chinese cities.