Activity at Shanghai ’s two main airports was muted on Wednesday, with only a fraction of the usual passenger-flight schedule in operation after the city reopened for business following a two-month lockdown. A total of 31 flights took off from and arrived in China’s financial and commercial hub as of 12:43pm on Wednesday, 63 per cent of the total scheduled a day earlier and just 2 per cent of the 1,560 flights on the same day last year, according to aviation data provider Flight Master. Thirty-eight flights were cancelled on Wednesday. The slow recovery at Pudong and Hongqiao airports – two of the busiest aviation hubs in the world – highlights the lockdown’s lingering impact on the world’s second-largest aviation market, while disrupting people’s daily lives. And with Chinese consumers avoiding travel due to restrictions and compulsory hotel quarantines, experts expect the industry slump to persist for some time. Hongqiao airport was largely deserted on Wednesday, with only small groups of passengers waiting in the departure hall, mostly college graduates heading home for the summer vacation. The nearby Hongqiao railway station was much busier, as more trains were put into operation. Students and migrant workers were leaving the city as they believed it would be harder to find decent jobs in the immediate future. Feng Li, a student from Shanghai Normal University Tianhua College, was waiting for a flight to her hometown in Guizhou province. “I just graduated and want to go home to look for a job. Without the pandemic and lockdown, I would have stayed and tried for a job here,” she said. Shanghai requires people leaving the city to obtain a negative Covid-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test within 48 hours and a negative rapid antigen test within 24 hours as well as to display a green health code – which indicates a person’s negative Covid-19 status via an app. The city is also encouraging individuals not to leave the city unless they have to. The duration of the validity of the PCR test has confused many travellers, leaving them stranded at both the railway station and airports. An 18-year-old college student surnamed Lin had to pay an extra 1,300 yuan (US$195) to postpone his flight to Thursday, as he was told his test result had passed the validity period. “I don’t know what to do next. I have nowhere to go, so I guess I’ll have to stay here tonight,” he said. He arrived in Shanghai from Guizhou province in mid-March to intern at a hospital. But except for a few training sessions in March, he had done nothing over the past months. “I haven’t learned or earned anything from this journey. Instead, it has cost me a lot of money,” he said. The pain is also being felt by the nation’s aviation industry, which was leading international peers with a decent recovery in domestic flights after the pandemic was brought under control in 2020 and last year. In January and February alone, the country’s airlines and airports lost 22.2 billion yuan, more than a quarter of the 84.2 billion yuan loss for the whole of 2021. “It takes time for airlines to arrange their flight schedules,” said Li Hanming, an independent aviation consultant and founder of Li & Li Consultancy. The restrictions at other Chinese cities, as well as special restrictions imposed by schools, colleges and companies, are deterring people from travelling to avoid possible disruption to their day-to-day activities, he said. Cargo volume at Pudong Airport, meanwhile, has already recovered to around 80 per cent of the level before the lockdown, the Ministry of Transport said last Thursday. “Shanghai is still one of the most important origins and destinations for international air transport,” Li said. “However, China is still restricting passengers from entry and transit into the mainland, negatively impacting Shanghai’s competition with neighbouring hubs such as Seoul and Tokyo.”