China’s Hainan Airways launches flights between Tel Aviv and Shanghai

A Hainan Airlines airliner landed at Ben-Gurion Airport on Tuesday. The landing ended the inaugural flight of the company’s new Tel Aviv-Shanghai route, with three weekly flights on Boeing Dreamliners.

Because the route is to a new destination, Hainan Airlines will receive a €750,000 grant from the Tourism Ministry to be used for marketing efforts aimed at increasing the number of Chinese tourists to Israel.

Hainan launched its first route from Tel Aviv to Beijing in April 2016. The airline announced it was considering expanding its service on this route and this month added a fifth weekly flight on the route.

Hainan will operate three weekly flights on the Tel Aviv-Shanghai route: on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The flights will take off from Ben-Gurion Airport at 1:55 p.m. Israel time and land in Shanghai the next day at 5:30 a.m. local time. Takeoff from Shanghai will be at 1:25 a.m., and landing at Ben-Gurion Airport will be at 8:30 p.m. the same day.

Ticket prices on the first three flights will start at $500, after which they will be priced from $600. Prices of business-class tickets will start at $2,749.

Some 64,600 visitors from China entered Israel in January-July 2017, 66% more than last year. Hainan flew 50,000 passengers in the first half of 2017.

Hainan’s figures show that 40% of those coming to Israel are business people, 30% are classed as “Christian pilgrimage tourists,” and 30% are general tourists. The tourist groups usually stay in Israel for six nights.

Hainan is the largest private airline in China and has a fleet of 177 planes.