On December 22, 2025, beneath a pristine Sanya sky, a Boeing airliner touched down at Phoenix International Airport. As its wheels met the tarmac, twin arcs of water erupted from awaiting fire trucks, crystallizing the sunlight into a brilliant rainbow arch. The aircraft passed solemnly through this liquid gateway—the aviation world's highest honor, the water salute.

Unbeknownst to most of the 100-plus passengers on board, they had just made history. They were the first travelers on Flight DV482 from Prague, the Czech Republic, to Sanya in the Chinese island province of Hainan—China's inaugural passenger route operating under the Seventh Freedom of the Air, which allows an airline to operate routes entirely between two foreign nations without ever touching down in its homeland. The weekly service is operated by Kazakhstan's SCAT Airlines.

The timing was symbolic: This historic flight arrived just four days after Hainan launched its island-wide special customs operations. Under the new regulatory model, goods entering or leaving Hainan, unless destined for any place on the Chinese mainland, will be subject to fewer customs checks and potentially lower or no tariffs.

Passports for the sky

In the context of international air transport, traffic rights are not an abstraction. They function as essential traffic permits for aircraft moving between nations, strictly delineating the operational boundaries for airlines in the global skies.

The "Nine Freedoms of the Air" are a set of traffic rights that form the legal skeleton of global aviation. The most commercially important may be the Seventh Freedom—the "standalone third-country right."

It's essentially a permit for an airline to operate flights between two foreign countries without the origin, destination or transfer point being within that airline's own country. Consequently, the extent to which a region grants this right is a direct measure of its air market's openness and competitiveness.

"This is the most important liberalization of traffic rights in China's civil aviation history," an official from the Civil Aviation Office of Hainan's Department of Transport told newspaper Hainan Daily.

Surrounded by sea, air travel is Hainan's lifeline to the outside world. The master plan for the Hainan Free Trade Port (FTP), released in 2020, includes an initiative to pilot Seventh Freedom traffic rights and envisions Hainan as a regional aviation hub facing the Pacific and Indian oceans. Five years on, as island-wide special customs operations are now fully in place, implementation has followed.

Hainan is now China's only province piloting both the Fifth and Seventh Freedom traffic rights—the former being the right to pick up and drop off traffic between two foreign states as part of a longer route to or from the airline's homeland. While it has leveraged the Fifth Freedom to launch 14 routes, the introduction of Seventh Freedom rights signifies that Hainan's open skies have reached an elite global tier.

30 seconds and 30 minutes

For passengers aboard the inaugural Flight DV482, the most immediate impression is likely one of efficiency and convenience.

At the customs area of Sanya Phoenix International Airport, arriving international passengers can complete the arrival card within minutes by following on-screen prompts to select their nationality and using the multilingual sample forms.

Behind this lies meticulous preparation by immigration authorities for the growing influx of international travelers. "We independently developed a foreign national arrival card management system supporting 12 languages widely used across over 100 countries," Zhou Yu, an official at the Sanya Phoenix Immigration Inspection Station, told Beijing Review.

Efficiency gains are measured in seconds. "The average clearance time per passenger is reduced by 30 seconds," Wang Jian, deputy head of the Phoenix Immigration Inspection Station, said. "This translates to roughly 30 minutes saved for the entire clearance process of a single flight."

The figures released by Haikou Customs on January 12 confirm the momentum: In 2025, inbound and outbound passenger traffic at Hainan's airports grew 27.2 percent to 2.644 million, while the number of inbound and outbound flights rose 17.4 percent to 17,907. This expansion was driven by the addition of 37 international and regional routes, bringing the total to 92 and extending coverage across Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe and Oceania.

SCAT Airlines Vice President Vladimir Sytnik told Hainan Daily that Sanya is a pivotal city in the Hainan FTP, while Prague is a major European tourism and cultural hub. The new route linking the two cities has a large passenger base and promises strong returns.

He particularly attributed the launch of this route to China's consistent and forward-looking policies on international air transport development.

More than deepening collaboration, the introduction of Seventh Freedom rights redefines Hainan's role. It opens the possibility for the island to evolve from a destination served primarily by local carriers into an operational base for international airlines, elevating its status to that of an Asia-Pacific aviation hub.

The industrial chain

Liberalized traffic rights are just part of broader reforms in the aviation sector in Hainan.

The one-stop aircraft maintenance base in the Haikou Airport Comprehensive Bonded Zone is a hive of activity. Aircraft of different liveries stream in, with hangars filled for checks, repairs and repainting.

In 2021, the State Council, China's highest state administrative organ, approved the establishment of the zone dedicated to businesses such as bonded aircraft maintenance, bonded aircraft engine maintenance, bonded aircraft leasing and logistics services for bonded aviation materials.

"Just like cars need regular servicing, aircraft require regular maintenance," Wang Haiye, Chairman of Haikou Airport Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Co. Ltd., the operator of the base, said. Since commencing operations in 2022, the base has completed over 100 maintenance services for more than 20 foreign airlines, including Qatar Airways and MIAT Mongolian Airlines, in less than four years.

In 2024, the base's overseas business surged sixfold, driven by enhanced capacity and service standards that have secured repeat clients. Currently, narrow-body aircraft maintenance averages five to six days, while wide-body maintenance typically takes 12-15 days. In 2024, Qatar Airways entered into a three-year aircraft painting contract with the company, worth roughly 100 million yuan ($14 million), following a successful trial of its services the previous year.

Supportive policies, including exemption of cash deposits for inbound airplanes and duty-free fuel and maintenance supplies, save airlines 10-15 percent on maintenance costs in the Hainan FTP, according to Wang.

The bonded policies enable a "parts supermarket," where components pre-stocked by overseas suppliers are readily available for aircraft undergoing maintenance. Comparatively, cross-border procurement and transportation typically take two to three months, Wang told newspaper People's Daily.

Following the launch of island-wide special customs operations in December 2025, Hainan's zero-tariff list has expanded from over 1,900 to about 6,600 tariff lines, now covering 74 percent of all product categories. In the aviation sector, more than 90 percent of aircraft parts and maintenance materials are eligible for duty-free treatment. "The broader coverage and more application scenarios provide greater space for enterprises to optimize costs," China Civil Aviation News reported. BR

Printed edition title: Beyond the Horizon           

(Reporting from Hainan Province)

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon

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