Private company

Grand China Air

Chinese airline

Grand China Air is a Chinese airline based at Haikou Meilan International Airport.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 20, 2026.

Overview

2007Founded1
B-5539@PEK (20200825171808)
Photo: N509FZ, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons4

Grand China Air is a Chinese airline based at Haikou Meilan International Airport.2

The story

Grand China Air was formed on 29 November 2007 under the initiative of the HNA group's largest operational entity, Hainan Airlines, to merge its operations with HNA Group's subsidiaries Shanxi Airlines, Chang An Airlines, and China Xinhua Airlines. The airline is headquartered in Beijing and registered in Hainan Province. As of 14 April 2012 only one of its 737-800s have been fitted with winglets.

Grand China Air was owned by 23 shareholders. The top 5 shareholders were Hainan Development Holdings (24.97%), HNA Group (23.11%), Starstep (9.57%), Haikou Meilan International Airport (8.30%) and Shenhua Group (5.56%). It was reported that George Soros was a minority shareholder It was reported that Starstep was still owned by Soros. Former associate of Soros, Bharat Bhisé, via Pan-American Aviation Holdings, owned 4.00% stake of Grand China Air as the 8th largest shareholder (in 2015 Pan-American was acquired by Jun Guan); Pan-American Aviation Holdings was a minority shareholder of HNA Group indirectly.

U.S. sanctions

In January 2021, the United States government named Grand China Air as a company "owned or controlled" by the People's Liberation Army and thereby prohibited any American company or individual from investing in it.

From Wikipedia’s article on Grand China Air, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Products and brands

Destinations

Grand China Air will serve the same destinations as Hainan Airlines.

Fleet

Current fleet

As of August 2025, Grand China Air operates an all-Boeing 737-800 fleet composed of the following aircraft:

Former fleet

The airline previously operated the following aircraft (as of August 2018):

Boeing 737-300

From Wikipedia’s article on Grand China Air, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Timeline

  1. 2007Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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