BEIJING — China's air transport market registered negative growth in January due to the impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak, a civil aviation official said on Feb 12.

In January, the air transport turnover totaled 10.1 billion tonne-km, down 4.9 percent year-on-year, said Xiong Jie, a spokesperson with the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

Around 50.6 million passenger trips were made, down 5.3 percent from the same period of last year, of which, passenger trips on domestic routes declined by 7 percent to 44.01 million.

Driven by the rapid growth of international passenger traffic in the first half of January, passenger trips on international routes gained 8.4 percent from a year earlier to 6.59 million, Xiong said.

Cargo transport dropped by 9.8 percent year-on-year to 606,000 tons last month.