The effectiveness of air traffic restriction in containing the spread of infectious diseases is full of controversy in prior literature. In January 2020, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) announced air traffic restriction in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. This study’s aim is to empirically examine the policy effectiveness.

The data from 2 third-party platforms are used in this investigation. The COVID-19 data from the platform DXY and the air traffic data from Airsavvi are matched to each other. The robust panel regression with controlling city effect and time effect is conducted.

The curvilinear relations are found between the air traffic restriction and the existing cases, and the recovery rate (quadratic term = 9.006 and −0.967, respectively). As the strength of air traffic restriction is growing, the negative effect (-8.146) of air traffic restriction on the existing cases and the positive effect (0.961) of air traffic restriction on the recovery rate, respectively, begin decreasing.

On the macro level, the air traffic restriction may help alleviate the growth of existing cases and help raise the recovery rate of COVID-19 in megacities of China, but both these effects will marginally recede as the restriction strength is intensifying.