Direct flights have resumed between India and China after a five-year hiatus, the latest sign of warming relations between the world’s two most populous countries.
IndiGo flight 6E 1703 departed from India’s Kolkata airport at 10pm on Sunday, touching down in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou some three-and-a-half hours later.
Flights between India and mainland China had been suspended since early 2020 at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and remained halted after a deadly clash on their disputed Himalayan border escalated tensions.
The two nuclear-armed neighbors have since been working to reduce frictions, reaching an agreement last fall on military disengagement along their disputed border and resuming high-level dialogue for the first time in five years.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in India, Yu Jing, confirmed the flight, writing in a post on X: “Direct flights between China and India are now a reality.”
State-owned China Eastern Airlines is also set to resume flying between Shanghai and Delhi on November 9, according to Yu, and IndiGo said it is launching a new Delhi–Guangzhou service on November 10.
The Indian government said the return of direct flights will “facilitate people-to-people contact” and help “the gradual normalization of bilateral exchanges.”
Credit: cnn.com
