Aviation: After 5 years, India, China direct flights resume
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Direct flights between India and China resumed on Sunday as relations between the countries appear to be thawing.
The first IndiGo flight 6E 1703, from Kolkata, landed in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou on Monday, carrying about 180 passengers, the media reported.
Direct flights between the two countries were first suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. They did not resume because of a deadly military clash in the East Ladakh area, which escalated tensions a few months later.
But the two countries have since been steadily rebuilding relations. Last year, they reached a landmark agreement on border patrols and the de-escalation of tensions.
Early this month, New Delhi said the resumption of direct flights would “facilitate people-to-people contact” and help “the gradual normalisation of bilateral exchanges.”
In August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited China for the first time in seven years and met President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit. The same month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had visited India and discussed “de-escalation, delimitation and boundary affairs” with officials in Delhi.
In July, India had also restarted issuing visas for Chinese tourists.
At the Kolkata airport on Sunday evening, airline staff lit brass oil lamps to mark the resumption of direct flights as IndiGo passengers checked in.
A senior Chinese consular official, Qin Yong, told reporters at the airport that it was a “very important day for the India-China relationship.”
China Eastern Airlines is set to launch a flight connecting Shanghai and Delhi in November. It will fly three times a week from November 9, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in India posted on X.
