Air China Limited is abbreviated as "Air China" and its predecessor, the former Air China, was founded in 1988. According to "Civil Aviation System Reform Program" approved and passed by the State Department, in October 2002, the former Air China combined China National Aviation Company and China Southwest Airlines and founded China Aviation Group Company. Based on the union air transport resources of the three companies, the new Air China Company was founded. On September 30th, 2004, approved by the National Assets Supervision Committee of the State Department and as the main air transport company controlled by China Aviation Group, Air China Limited was founded in Beijing in due form, with 23,000 employees, a total registered assets of 6.5 billion RMB and the paid-up capital of 9.433 billion RMB. On December 15th, 2004, Air China had successfully made its listed stocks appear in Hong Kong (stock code 0753) and London (trading code AIRC).

The enterprise logo of Air China is an artistic Phoenix, the Chinese version of Air China written by Mr. Deng Xiaoping and the English translation "AIR CHINA". The Phoenix is the divine bird in the ancient Chinese legend and also the lucky bird adored by Chinese people since the ancient times. According to the record in "Shan Hai Jing" - "The phoenix born from an oriental country called Junzi, flies across the great Kunlun Mountain and over all the oceans. Where she flies she could bring luckiness and peace." The logo of Air China is the phoenix, at the same time it is also the artistic transfiguration of the word “VIP”. The color is the traditional Chinese red which implies luckiness, roundness, auspiciousness, happiness and expresses Air China personnel’s sincere passion of serving the society and endless pursue of the safety enterprise. The desire and orientation of Air China is "an air company with an international reputation", the connotation of which is to realize four strategic targets, i.e. being recognized by major passengers, being the most valuable in China, having the strongest power of profit earnings and having competitive power in the world. The enterprise spirit emphasizes "serve the world with a warm heart, guide the future by innovation". The enterprise mission is "meet the requirements of customers, create mutual values". The enterprise sense of worth is "make a high level of service; get the universal approval of the public". The service notion is "reassurance, satisfaction, easiness, sensation". The enterprise culture of Air China has expressed the notion of broadcasting love all over the world and pursuing excellent service quality.

Air China is the only airline company which carries the national flag to fly. It has the first rank of brand value among domestic airline companies (the world brand laboratory evaluated it in 2006 as 18.896 billion RMB), and it is among the leading position of air passenger transport, freight transport and related service etc. Known to all, Air China takes the responsibility of special plane task for Chinese national leaders who go abroad for visits and foreign leaders and governmental leaders for their Chinese visits. The headquarters of Air China is located in Beijing, and it also has several branch companies such as Southwest, Zhejiang, Chongqing, Inner-Mongolia, Tianjin, Guizhou, Tibet and a Shanghai & Huanan base. It also owns a project technology branch company, a business plane branch company, Ameco, China International Freight Transport Airline Co. Ltd. and Beijing Air Food Company. Air China also shares the equity of Shenzhen Airline, Cathay Pacific Airline etc, is the biggest stockholder of Shangdong Aviation Group Co. Ltd., and controlled Macao Airline Co. Ltd. until December 2005. Air China owns 176 Boeing and Airbus planes and flies to 22 countries and districts, among which there are 36 international cities and 70 domestic cities. There are 4,160 periodical flights per week.

Air China has a strong domestic and international route and sales network. In China, Air China continually acts as a Beijing hub, and in recent years it has strengthened several regional hubs such as the Southwest with the center of Chengdu, Eastern China with the center of Shanghai, Southern China with the center of Guangzhou. Meanwhile, in order to strengthen the international route network, Air China attached great importance on cooperation with foreign airlines, and it has signed code sharing agreement with 11 domestic and foreign airlines, i.e. Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Scandinavian Airlines, Finnair, Turkish Airlines, United Airlines, ANA, Dragonair, Macao Airlines, Shandong Airlines and Shanghai Airlines. There are 1,210 Code sharing flights per week. In May 2005, Air China signed to join in the biggest aviation union, Star-Field Union Understanding Memorandum. The numerous domestic, international and code share flight courses make Air China’s flight course network able to offer domestic and foreign customers convenient flight service. Up to the end of 2005, Air China had 102 sales departments in China and abroad, 10,000 dependent sales deputies among which 3,000 were domestic. It has also developed 2,105 direct sales clients and 115 sales counters which create a strong and powerful sales network. In order to strengthen the market sales and make the sales channel more flexible, at present Air China has made electronic tickets and online sales businesses available in many domestic cities, which can offer customers convenient and fast ticket purchasing service.

Air China owns an extensive client group with a high quality. Over 71% of the guests who take Air China flights are business and commercial passengers. Air China has become the first choice for many clients from Chinese governmental organizations and companies. The Frequent Passengers Club of Air China has active and faithful members who have reached 3.01 million people as of the end of 2005. In August 2004, Air China has become the sole and formal airline partner of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. In order to meet the requirements of the advanced clients, Air China has made a huge investment in the innovation of the hardware and software equipments such as the first class and business class seats of 15 wide body long-distance planes like B747