Direct flights between India and mainland China resume on Sunday after four years, with an IndiGo flight scheduled to take off from Kolkata’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport at 10 pm tonight. Airline services between the countries, except for the Chinese special administrative region of Hong Kong, had been halted since early 2020, just before COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic.
“The first flight is scheduled to leave Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport at 10 pm today,” an official at the NSCBI airport told PTI.
Pieter Elbers, Chief Executive Officer, IndiGo, said in a press release, “We are delighted to announce the resumption daily, non-stop flights between India and mainland China. We are proud to be amongst the first to resume direct connectivity to China from two points in India. This will once again allow seamless movement of people, goods, and ideas, while also strengthening bilateral ties between the two of the world’s most populous countries and fast-growing economies. With this very important step, we are looking at introducing more direct flights into China.”
Even though international flight operations resumed during the pandemic, the India-China bilateral relationship soured after the Galwan clashes in 2020 and continued to be frigid over the following years. The lack of direct flights led to high ticket prices and long travel times for those flying between India and China, as travellers were prompted to take connecting flights from hub airports in Southeast Asia.
Airlines from both countries lost on potential passenger loads, and airlines functioning in Southeast Asian countries seized the opportunity. The passenger traffic between India and China—currently solely through connecting hubs in South and Southeast Asia—is less than half of what it was in 2019.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, especially in December 2019, there were 539 scheduled direct flights per month between the two nations, offering a cumulative seat capacity of over 1.25 lakh. Of these, Indian carriers—IndiGo and Air India—accounted for 168 flights, or approximately 31 per cent. The remaining nearly 70 per cent of flights were operated by Chinese airlines, including Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, and Shandong Airlines.
The Ministry of External Affairs had announced in the first week of October this year that a consensus had been reached between the two countries over the resumption of direct air services connecting designated points in India and China.
