Air India aircrafts stand parked at the airport in New Delhi, India, Oct 31, 2023. - Photo: AP File
NEW DELHI: For many Indian and Chinese people the immediate resumption of direct flight services between the two countries meets their needs and benefit both economies.
Direct flight services between China and India were suspended at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.
But the services have not resumed although India lifted pandemic-related restrictions on international air routes a year later and China lifted all Covid-linked travel measures in early 2023.
Direct flights are always the first preference for a traveller.
Today travellers are looking at ease of travel with free and visa relaxation and direct flights.
There will always be an increase of footfalls if every country follows these, said Jyoti Mayal, president, Travel Agents Association of India.
It enables the countries both sides to focus on prominent and focused marketing by the airline and tourism boards, Mayal said.
Airline passengers from India currently travel to China through the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Myanmar after paying exorbitantly high airfares.
Indian trader Shranik Chopra said since China is an important destination for many business people from India, there must be direct flight services for the benefit of common people from both sides.
Chopra, who takes part in the Canton Fair every year, said direct flight services would bring down the unnecessary waste of time and travel expenses and ease the ordeal faced by Indians at transit airports.
Direct flights between China and India can reduce travel time from 12 hours to six, save money and avoid hassles and delays with baggage during transit, said Sunil Kumar, an Indian who does business in Yiwu city of China’s Zhejiang province.
The lack of direct flights between the two nations also pose major challenges for hundreds of Indians who study in China as well as the families of many Indians, including businessmen, who began to work in China after travel restrictions were lifted by both countries in 2022.
China has been requesting India to restart direct passenger flights, but New Delhi continues to emphasise that the border dispute continues to weigh on ties between the world’s two most populous countries.
A senior official from India’s federal ministry of aviation, who is familiar with the matter but who refused to be identified, also told China Daily that New Delhi is reluctant to resume direct flights yet because of the border dispute.
Asked about the lack of direct flights, the spokesperson of India’s Ministry of External Affairs, Randhir Jaiswal, said “peace and tranquility on the border is important” for ties with China to become normal. The official, however, did not elaborate.
A senior official with Air India refused to comment on the possibility of restarting direct flight services between New Delhi and Beijing in the near future as well as the reasons for its suspension.
Before the pandemic broke out, Air India, India’s national carrier, used to operate four non-stop direct services a week from Shanghai to New Delhi, and onwards to Mumbai.
After pandemic travel restrictions were lifted by both countries, Kumar, along with about 107 traders and businessmen were the first Indians to land in Hangzhou in August 2022.
They took a charter flight from New Delhi which was operated by China Southern Airlines.
Kumar and the other Indians were stuck in India from March 2020 to August 2022 due to the pandemic-related travel restrictions.
“It will be more convenient to travel to India if there is a direct flight and we hope it will resume soon,” said Robin Jiang, chairman of the Sino-India Chamber of Commerce now based in New Delhi.
"Many tourists from China are keen to visit India. The number of Chinese tourists and corporate travellers to India have reduced significantly because of the non-availability of direct flight services between the two countries, said hotel industry analyst Ranjan Banerjee.
Direct flights could give a boost to the Indian hotel and tourism industry, Banerjee added.
Data from aviation analytics firm Cirium shows that the number of direct India-China flights peaked in December 2019, with a total of 539 scheduled flights operated by IndiGo, Air India, China Southern, China Eastern, Air China and Shandong Airlines.
Chinese carriers scheduled 371 of those flights, more than double the 168 flights operated by Indian airlines.
In a recent interview in Dubai, Pieter Elbers, CEO of IndiGo which is India’s largest airline, stated, "When the time is right and the governments (of both countries) come to a mutual understanding of how to move forward, we'll assess the market."
Indian airlines, including Indigo, and Chinese carriers are currently discussing with their respective governments the feasibility of resuming direct flight routes.
IndiGo currently operates seven flights a week on the Delhi-Hong Kong route, enabling passengers to connect to the Chinese mainland from the city.
Zha Liyou, a former Chinese consul general based in India’s eastern city of Kolkata, reiterated that direct flights between China and India should resume, noting that the governments of the two countries could work together to achieve this goal. - China Daily/ANN
