As you can see, I have some extra time on my hands this afternoon (China is basically shut down this week) so I've taken it upon myself to do a little number crunching with the hope of providing those interested with a better understanding of the way air fares are priced in China. The following chart is based on data extracted from ctrip and the Great Circle Mapper:
PHP Code:
route km y y/km c f low low/y
pek-kmg 2113 1810 0.86 2350 2720 540 29.8%
pek-can 1876 1700 0.91 2210 2550 680 40.0%
sha-ctu 1662 1610 0.97 2090 2420 1290 80.1%
sha-can 1174 1280 1.09 1660 1920 900 70.3%
pek-sha 1075 1130 1.05 1470 1700 450 39.8%
pek-xiy 934 1050 1.12 1370 1580 630 60.0%
szx-hak 459 690 1.50 900 1040 210 30.4%
kmg-ljg 176 530 3.01 690 800 210 39.6%
sha-ngb 153 420 2.75 --- 630 250 59.5%
Comments:
-all currency units in RMB (/8 to get USD equivalents)
-base (y) fares are set by the government. c is y +30%; f is y +50% (rounded to the nearest 10 rmb). The airlines themselves have a reasonable amount of lattitude with respect to the numbers of discount seats they make available.
-column four is the y fare divided by distance. In the past, this was pretty much standardized across the board (for train travel, it still is), but it now appears that shorter trips cost more.
-column seven refers to the lowest price on offer for flights leaving tomorrow. I have no idea why the ex-SHA fares are so much higher than the rest (has been the case all summer, actually), but I will point out that SHA-NGB for y250 is a good deal.
-the last column (eight) refers to the low price divided by the y price. Chinese quote discounts in this (bottom-up) manner, except they move the decimal two places to the left. As such, travel agent business cards that advertise 2-8折机票 mean that they sell tickets for 30-80% off full fare Y.
-Generally, it's tough to get deep discounts ex-cities where your travel agent doesn't have a local ticketing presence. For example, I can always find good fares to Kunming, but have never been able to find anything below y1000 on the return without calling up agents there. (For tomorrow, ctrip's low on kmg-pek is 1090, a 6折 or 40% discount.)
Edited to add: Sorry, that's the best I can do with respect to table formatting, given my limited knowledge of this interface.