Loong Air

Is Loong Air safe?

Yes. Loong Air has had no fatal accident and has not lost an aircraft since it started flying out of Hangzhou in 2012, and it flies one of the youngest fleets of any large Chinese airline: 77 Airbus A320-family jets averaging about six and a half years. It is an IATA member, which means it passes the IATA safety audit. We score it 84.

What keeps it from a higher score is time and information. Thirteen years of passenger flying is a good start, not a long record, and China's regulator publishes so little about incidents that a quiet record at a mid-sized private airline is hard to read.

Who is Loong Air?

Zhejiang Loong Airlines, branded Loong Air, is the only airline based in Zhejiang province. It began as a cargo carrier with converted Boeing 737-300 freighters and now flies mainly passengers, from Hangzhou Xiaoshan with secondary bases at Ningbo and Wenzhou and branches in Chengdu, Xi'an and Guangzhou. In 2025 it carried more than 14 million passengers on 135 routes, and the regulator ranked it 14th among China's independent airlines.

It is privately controlled. Chairman Liu Qihong controls just over half the shares, mainly through Zhejiang Changlong Group, and provincial and city investment funds have joined since 2021. In June 2026 the Shanghai Stock Exchange accepted its application for a main-board listing. The prospectus is the most detailed public account of the airline, and most figures on this page come from it.

What does Loong Air fly?

Only the Airbus A320 family. The average age was 6.41 years at the end of 2025, younger than Spring Airlines (8.7 years) and well below Shandong Airlines (11.86). Every aircraft is a fly-by-wireFly-by-wireA flight control system in which the pilot's inputs go to computers, which then move the control surfaces. Many such systems also stop unsafe manoeuvres.More in the glossary jet with a modern cockpit, and the 2026 listing money is meant to buy more A320s and spare engines.

Two details are worth knowing. Only 8 of the 77 aircraft are owned; 23 are on finance leases and 46 on operating leases, which is a financial point more than a safety one. The count includes one A319 leased from Hunan Airlines. And the prospectus itself names the risk of one type: if the A320 family were grounded or hit by an urgent airworthiness directive, the whole fleet would be affected. That risk is real but small for a type with as long a record as the A320.

What incidents has Loong Air had?

We found no serious incident (a runway excursionRunway excursionWhen an aircraft leaves the runway surface during take-off or landing, either off the end (an overrun) or off the side (a veer-off).More in the glossary, loss of separationLoss of separationWhen two aircraft come closer to each other than the minimum distance air traffic rules require. A reported near miss in the UK is called an airprox.More in the glossary or similar) on public record for Loong Air, and the prospectus says it has had no accident or serious incident in 13 years of flying, over 1.7 million hours. The events that did reach the record are minor:

• Hangzhou, December 2015. A 737-300 freighter burst both right main tyres on take-off. The crew circled for about four hours to burn fuel and landed back at Hangzhou, where firefighters covered the aircraft in foam.
• Hangzhou, February 2016. An A320 bound for Bijie turned back after a mouse was spotted on board. Rodents can chew wiring, so airlines treat this as a safety issue, and the aircraft was grounded for disinfection.

The prospectus also lists one safety-related fine. In August 2025 CAAC's East China office fined Loong Air's maintenance subsidiary CNY 20,000 because engine maintenance on one of its jets was not done as the technical documents required. No other sanction was imposed.

That is still a thin file for an airline of this size. The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) publishes few investigation reports, mostly in Chinese, and Loong Air draws less international coverage than the big state airlines. So we score serious incidents at 73, between Sichuan Airlines and Spring Airlines, rather than at the top of the scale.

Who oversees Loong Air?

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 list), 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 latest 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%. Loong Air is a member of IATA, 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 safety audit every two years. We score oversight 80, the same as other IOSA-registered Chinese airlines, because the CAAC reports so little in public.

Flying Loong Air

Most Loong Air flights are domestic, between Hangzhou or Ningbo and other Chinese cities, plus routes to Hong Kong and Macau, Central Asia, Japan, South Korea and South-East Asia. Typhoons reach the Zhejiang coast in summer and autumn and can close Hangzhou and Ningbo for a day or more. If you fly then, book a morning departure and watch the airline's app for cancellations; a cancelled flight in a typhoon is the safe choice.

How we scored it

Fleet (90) is the strongest factor: a young fleet of one modern type. The accident record (90) is clean but covers only about 13 years. Serious incidents (73) are held down by the lack of public data and the 2025 maintenance fine, not by any known flight event. Overall 84, level with Sichuan Airlines and a little above Chengdu Airlines, which flies a mixed Airbus and COMAC fleet.