Flights to increase as travel rush starts

CHINA Eastern Airlines will increase its transport capacity by 12 percent from Sunday to cater for the winter travel rush.

The Shanghai-based carrier will operate new international flights during the winter flight season between Pudong and London (Gatwick Airport) as well as Pudong and Madrid (stopping in Xi’an in northwest Shaanxi Province).

It will also reopen flights between Shanghai and Clark in Philippines as well as Shanghai and Cairns in Australia.

Additional flights will be arranged on popular tourism routes between Shanghai and Dubai as well as Shanghai and Phnom Penh in Cambodia.

The winter flight season runs from Sunday through to March 30, 2019, which includes China’s annual Spring Festival travel rush between January and March.

The airline plans to open 80 new domestic and international flights, while adding more flights on 175 routes.

The carrier will handle more than 2,690 daily flights on average, including 370 international flights, during the season, according to China Eastern.

For domestic flights, the carrier will mainly increase the capacity among busy airports in Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou in south Guangdong Province, Chengdu in southwest Sichuan Province, Xi’an and Kunming in southwest Yunnan Province.

China Eastern will deploy its newly introduced Boeing 787-9 aircraft to fly popular domestic routes from Shanghai to Guangzhou, Sanya in south Hainan Province, Chengdu, Shenzhen and southwest Chongqing.