Travel between China and Japan continues to face major disruption as a large number of flights have been cancelled just ahead of the busy holiday season.
Over the next two weeks, flights on 46 routes are getting scrapped, including ones to big tourist spots, says the Flight Manager app from a Shenzhen tech company. A total of 38 airports in both countries will feel the hit.
These cuts are clashing with China’s New Year’s public holiday from 1st to 3rd January, making things even tougher for travellers.
All the cancelled flights are run by Chinese airlines like Air China, China Eastern, Hainan Airlines, Xiamen Airlines, and Sichuan Airlines. Places like Osaka and Nagoya in Japan are taking a big blow, with half the routes connecting China‘s smaller cities, think Shenyang, Chongqing, and Wuhan, to Japan’s top tourist areas.
The aviation market between Chinese mainland and Japan shows no sign of recovery, with over 2,100 flights from Chinese mainland to Japan already canceled for January next year, and 46 routes set to have "zero flights" in the coming two weeks, industry information platform showed… pic.twitter.com/vFmfAsqSaT
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) December 22, 2025
Direct flights from Shanghai to smaller Japanese spots like Nagasaki, Niigata, and Kagoshima are also off for now. But bigger routes, like Beijing or Shanghai to Tokyo and Osaka, should mostly stay okay with just small glitches.
So far, over 1,900 flights, more than 40% of what’s planned for December, have been axed, and experts say next month’s numbers will climb even higher. The number of cancelled flights scheduled for January 2026 has reached 2,195.
All flights on 46 China-Japan routes have been canceled for the next two weeks! The number of canceled flights scheduled for January 2026 has reached 2,195.
— Nanchang China
未来两周46条中日航线取消全部航班！2026年1月取消量已达2195班次 pic.twitter.com/ONC7tuyA3V(@Nanchang_China) December 22, 2025
Why the tensions are boiling between Japan and China
Things started heating up in November when Japan‘s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the country might send troops if a “survival-threatening” fight breaks out in the Taiwan Strait. Beijing fired back with a travel warning on 14th November, telling Chinese folks to skip Japan over safety worries. They put out similar alerts earlier this month after strong quakes hit northeastern Japan and Hokkaido.
Even so, mainland Chinese visitors to Japan went up 3% in November compared to last year, per the Japan National Tourism Organisation, though that’s way slower than the 10.4% jump from all countries. From January to November, Chinese arrivals were up 37.5% year on year.
