In a major boost to people-to-people ties, Delhi and Shanghai have re-established direct flight connectivity as the first set of passengers travelling on China Eastern Airlines' Airbus A330 landed in the Chinese city on Monday morning.
The route connecting the Indian capital to China's largest city is a major international air corridor, with millions of passengers expected to avail the air services.
China Eastern Airlines has also become the first Chinese carrier to fly a route to the Indian capital after a five-year gap, Global Times reported on Sunday. A China Eastern Airlines flight MU563, with 248 passengers aboard, also departed from Shanghai Pudong International Airport for Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) shortly after 1 PM on Sunday. The report said that the load factor of the flight was more than 95%, indicative of high passenger demand.
The airline told Chinese media that it will operate three flights per week on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday on the Shanghai-Delhi route, with plans to also resume the Kunming-Kolkata route and launch a new Shanghai-Mumbai route.
Meanwhile, Indian carrier Indigo is also scheduled to start a new route between Delhi and Guangzhou from Monday, with the first flight leaving the Indian capital at 10 PM.
On 26 October, Indigo became the first airline to resume direct flight connectivity between the two countries, resuming services on the Kolkata-Guangzhou route.
The decision to resume direct flight connectivity between the world's most populous nations is a direct outcome of the normalisation of bilateral ties following the eastern Ladakh disengagement pact and the subsequent meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping on the margins of the BRICS Summit in Kazan last October.
On 2 October, India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced in a statement that direct flight connectivity was being reinstated, a move that would facilitate people-to-people contacts and contribute towards the gradual normalisation of bilateral exchanges.