New services, deals

YTO Express

Chinese private courier Shanghai YTO Express’s airline subsidiary launched a chartered international cargo route from North China’s Tianjin to Astana, capital of Kazakhstan on Wednesday.

The first batch of cargo was 21 tons of electronics air-shipped from Tianjin to Astana, Tianjin Binhai International Airport said.

The service is YTO Airlines’ first international route, which will be followed by more cargo routes from Tianjin to Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, the airline operator said.

Harbin aircraft

China is getting ready to make its twin-engine Harbin aircraft available in the Brazilian market and to manufacture the planes locally, said Jose Santos, a Brazilian representative of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, on Tuesday.

The move would bring the company’s Y12, Y12F and Y12E model planes to Brazil for the first time, Santos said at Sao Paulo’s LABACE 2018, Latin America’s biggest annual business aviation trade fair and the second-largest in the world.

New airports

China is embracing a burgeoning general aviation industry with 93 newly licensed general aviation airports and an expanded fleet of aircraft in the first half of the year, according to civil aviation authorities.

The number of general aviation airports more than doubled from 80 by the end of 2017 to 173 by June, statistics from the Civil Aviation Administration of China showed on Monday.

In the first half of the year, civil aviation authorities registered 118 new general aviation aircraft, a 9.5 percent year-onyear increase, bringing the country’s total to 2,415.

THAI Smile

THAI Smile Airways, a subsidiary airline of THAI Airways International Public Co and a regional airline operator for short- and medium-range flights, announced on Wednesday that it would appoint CITS (Beijing) Air Travel Service Co as its general sales agent in China.

This appointment is aimed at handling the airline’s sales development, bookings and ticketing services within China as well as conducting direct marketing and servicing support to travel agents in China, the company said in a statement.

THAI Smile’s fleet consisted of 20 aircraft by 2016 and operates using narrow-body aircraft.