South Korea’s second largest full-service carrier Asiana Airlines Co. has decided to temporarily reduce the operation of six international routes with low traffic to offset losses caused by the sharp fall in the number of Chinese visitors to Korea amid the Beijing-Seoul diplomatic row over Korea’s deployment of the U.S.-supplied THAAD missile shield system.

The brief suspension, typically imposed for less than a month during crisis situations such as terrorist attacks or epidemic outbreaks, comes after China’s prolonged travel ban on Korea. Asiana Airlines was hit harder than its peers by the ban as its Chinese services make up 19.5 percent of its total revenue, higher than the industry average of 11 percent.

According to industry sources on Thursday, starting from the low season of September, Asiana Airlines will operate flights to Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok only once a day, one fewer than its current schedule. It will temporarily pull the plug on routes to Palau, Astana and Saipan. Asiana will soon submit to the transport ministry its plan to reschedule unprofitable routes, said industry sources.

“We need to restructure our routes to offset the damage caused by China’s extended retaliation,” said an unnamed official at Asiana Airlines. “After running full tilt during the summer peak season, we also intend to scale back our operations and use this period to conduct a maintenance check on our aircrafts.”

As part of efforts to reduce losses from its Chinese services, Asiana has already downsized its carriers used in flights to China. The midsized aircrafts accommodating 250-280 seats were recently replaced by small 170-seat jets.

The airliner hopes the new measure would help it make up for some losses after it successfully propped up its profits last year through route rescheduling. In February-March 2016, it permanently ended the operation of underperforming routes to Vladivostok, Bali and Yangon and managed to boost its on-year operating profit by 444 percent, raking in 256.5 billion won ($221.7 million) that year. The recent step, however, is considered to be weaker as such temporary cutbacks usually last no longer than a month.

By Kim Jung-hwan

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