An aircraft from China Eastern Airlines at Fukuoka Airport in Japan on December 14, 2025 Photo: VCG

Data from aviation industry information provider Umetrip sent to the Global Times on Tuesday showed that, as of Monday, approximately 45 percent of scheduled flights from Chinese mainland to Japan in February 2026 are now canceled. 

Among these, Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Dalian, and Guangzhou rank as the top five departure cities with the highest number of cancellations. 

Flights on routes such as Beijing Daxing-Osaka Kansai, Chengdu Tianfu-Osaka Kansai, and Chongqing Jiangbei-Osaka Kansai are completely canceled, resulting in a cancellation rate of 100 percent, the platform said. 

The data is in line with data from Flight Master, another platform which said on Monday that the cancellation rate for flights from the Chinese mainland to Japan in January 2026 reached 47.2 percent, an increase of 7.8 percentage points compared to December 2025. As of January 26, a total of 49 routes scheduled in February 2026 have cancelled all flights.

Several Chinese airlines including Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines said on Monday that for tickets issued before January 26, with flight departure dates between March 29  and October 24, 2026, Japan inbound, outbound, or transit flights are eligible for free refunds or ticket time changes. 

Prior to this, the free refund and change policy was only applicable until March 28.

Recently, given the deteriorating public security in Japan, a surge in criminal cases targeting Chinese nationals, and a spate of consecutive earthquakes striking certain regions, causing injuries, and the fact that the Japanese government has issued warnings about further quakes, the Chinese Foreign Ministry and Chinese embassy and consulates in Japan on Monday reminded Chinese citizens to refrain from traveling to Japan in the near term as the Spring Festival draws near, according to a notice released by the Department of Consular Affairs of the Chinese Foreign Ministry on its WeChat account.

Global Times