Kahini Chakraborty – Mumbai
With an aim to further strengthen its position in the India market, Air China has launched its first direct flight service from Mumbai to Beijing. The new direct flight will be operational four times a week. To service the route, the airline has introduced Airbus A330-300 with a total seating capacity of 305 seats, having 30 business class fully flat beds, 16 premium economy and 259 economy seats. STIC Travel Group is the India GSA for Air China.
Speaking to Express TravelWorld, Garuda Sun, general manager – Delhi office, Air China said, “Last year about 1.7 lakh Chinese travellers visited India, while seven lakh Indians visited China. We see a huge tourism growth potential for the two countries and believe that the direct service will attract more numbers. In the first half of this year China received 3.5 lakh Indian visitors which is a 4.7 per cent increase compared to last year. We have started with this four weekly direct flights, and the future plan is to make them daily.”
While Xia Baohui, general manager, Air China added, “We saw a growing demand from the Mumbai market. And hence have launched our direct Mumbai-Beijing flight. We already have four flights from New Delhi, and this could also be made daily in the future.”
Speaking on the tourism growth potential, Subhash Goyal, chairman, STIC Travel Group, opined, “We are expecting a 20-25 per cent increase in tourism in the next one year. We are planning to look at cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad for the expansion. After prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China and before that the head of the state of China’s visit to India the relations between the two countries have improved. Both the heads of the country have decided to have a Visit China Year in India and Visit India Year in China. So under the Visit India Year in China, the Chinese government is aggressive and Air China has started more flights.”
He added, “With Modi’s announcement of e-visa facility in China, we are hopeful that the tourism between both the countries will increase, especially Chinese travelling to India should increase by 15-20 per cent.”