CHINA'S largest private air carrier, Hainan Airlines, is to shift to a cargo sales method based on regions by integrating regional network resources from its existing mode based on cities, Logistics Week reported.

The move is a strategy to increase air cargo sales in view of slackened downturn-hit market since 2009 by allowing smaller neighbouring cities to sell the services of a larger city in the same region.

The report said the new method can double the carrier's regional sellable resources. For example, the five cities in the East China region - Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Wenzhou and Nanjing - has a total of 30 sellable cargo services on an individual basis, but after implementing the new mode, these five cities can sell each other's services and thus raise the number of regional sellable services to 89.