Capital Airlines

Is Capital Airlines safe?

Mostly, yes. Beijing Capital Airlines has never had a fatal accident, it passes the IATA safety audit, and it flies only Airbus jets under the same regulator as Air China and Hainan Airlines. We score it 80.

That is a few points below Hainan and Tianjin Airlines, its sister airlines in the HNA group, for one main reason. In August 2018, Capital wrote off an A320 after a landing at Macau went badly wrong. Everyone survived, but the investigation found that the crew's handling made a hard landing much worse.

What happened at Macau in 2018?

On 28 August 2018, flight JD5759, an Airbus A320 registered B-6952, was landing at Macau from Beijing with 157 passengers and 9 crew. The tower reported a light tailwind, within company limits. In the last 200 ft, the tailwind grew from 9 to 27 knots: severe low-level wind shear. Macau's airport had no equipment to detect it.

The jet hit the runway at 2.36 g and bounced. According to Macau's investigators (AACM), the crew did not keep a normal landing attitude after the bounce, and moving the thrust levers to idle while airborne raised the ground spoilers. Four seconds later the A320 came down at 3.41 g on its nose gear, which broke off. Debris went into both engines.

The captain went around. During the climb, the AACM says, the right engine's thrust lever was moved to idle by mistake, and the stall warning sounded twice; Chinese reporting of the final report adds that this was the less damaged engine. The report asked Capital to train its pilots in recovering from a bounced landing and to cross-check each other before changing critical controls. The crew diverted to Shenzhen, where everyone left by the slides. Five passengers had minor injuries. The aircraft did not fly again.

This is why the accident record scores 85 and not in the 90s. There were no deaths, and wind shear started the sequence. But investigators found that pilot handling caused the damage that wrote the aircraft off.

What other incidents has Capital had?

Two days before Macau, on 26 August 2018, an A320 flying from Kunming to Hangzhou lost cabin pressure climbing through about 22,000 ft. The oxygen masks dropped, the crew made an emergency descent and returned to Kunming. Earlier that year, an A321 cabin window cracked near Hangzhou. Other public reports are smaller: an A319 engine shut down near Jinan in 2016, and an A321 crew dealt with a cargo smoke warning near Beijing in 2021.

We found no public report of a serious incident at Capital since 2021. Like other Chinese airlines, though, Capital operates under a regulator, the CAAC, that publishes few investigations, so a short list is not proof of a clean record. We score incidents 74.

Who owns Capital Airlines?

Capital began as Deer Air (Jinlu Airlines), an HNA airline, and took its present name in 2010, when its scheduled Airbus flights were relaunched from Beijing as Capital Airlines. We treat Deer Air's airline flights as Capital's own history. The Aviation Safety Network data have no accident under either name, so the earlier years add nothing to the score in either direction.

Since December 2021, Capital has belonged to the restructured HNA airline group controlled by Liaoning Fangda. It is not a subsidiary of Hainan Airlines Holding, and the Hainan Airlines page counts none of its events. Hainan's 2026 half-year report shows money still owed by Capital and Tianjin for maintenance and aircraft rent, and Fangda's promise to fold both into the listed company later. That is a financial point, not a safety finding.

What does Capital Airlines fly?

Only Airbus: A319s, A320s and A321s, a few of them neo models, and A330s for longer routes. Capital publishes no fleet table. The tracker Airfleets counts 78 aircraft averaging 11.9 years. Nine A319s, at about 17 years, are the oldest, and the A321s are the youngest at about 8.6 years. That is older than the big three Chinese airlines, so the fleet scores 74.

Who oversees Capital Airlines?

The CAAC. China holds Category 1FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary in the FAA's International Aviation Safety Assessment (April 2025), no Chinese airline is on the EU Air Safety ListEU Air Safety ListThe European Commission's list of airlines banned or restricted from flying in EU airspace because they do not meet international safety standards.More in the glossary (June 2026), and China told the ICAO Assembly that its 2024 ICAO audit gave it an effective implementationICAO USOAPICAO's audit of how well each country's aviation regulator oversees safety. The result is an "effective implementation" percentage.More in the glossary score of 90.19%. Capital is an IATA member, which requires an IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary audit. We score oversight 80, as for every Chinese airline, because the CAAC publishes few reports and has released no update since March 2024 on the 2022 China Eastern crash.

Flying Capital Airlines safely

Capital's network mixes well-equipped hubs with harder airports. Beijing gets winter haze, Sanya sees typhoons from summer to autumn, and Lijiang sits in the mountains at about 2,200 m. If your crew goes around or diverts in gusty weather, that is the right call: Macau showed what a forced landing in wind shear can do. Keep your belt fastened whenever you are seated.

How we scored it

No fatal accident in the airline's history, but the 2018 hull lossHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary at Macau holds the accident record at 85. Oversight scores 80, and the fleet (74), incidents (74) and environment (74) are all mid-range, giving 80 overall.