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Xiamen Air adds Hangzhou-Melbourne
December 21st 2017
Xiamen Airlines – a SkyTeam member – continues to grow its footprint in Australia. Read More » On Sunday, Xiamen Airlines launched a twice-weekly Hangzhou-Melbourne B787-8 rotation, complementing its existing thrice-weekly Xiamen-Melbourne flights.
Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport said this was the 12th nonstop Chinese route from the Victorian capital, which added to flights from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Xiamen, Qingdao, Changsha, Xi’an, Chongqing and Zhengzhou.
The 12 Mainland cities are served by Air China, Beijing Capital Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Hainan Airlines, Sichuan Airlines and Tianjin Airlines.
Orient Aviation understands that Lucky Air, an HNA Aviation carrier like Hainan, is considering launching flights to Melbourne in 2018.
“We are delighted with Xiamen Airlines’ decision to expand into Hangzhou. The city is home to internet giant, Alibaba, and is where the third party mobile and online payment system Alipay was established. The region is viewed as one of China’s most prominent tech hubs. Last year, it was host city to the G-20 summit,” said Melbourne Airport’s chief of aviation, Simon Gandy.
“Given the City of Melbourne’s focus on becoming Australia’s capital for start-ups and entrepreneurs, we see this route as pivotal to driving opportunities for Victorian businesses. Further, Alibaba chose Melbourne as its base city, so there’s already a strong link in place,” Gandy added.
But that is not all there is. Chinese inbound tourism is equally important. “Over the past three years we’ve seen China take the lead as our largest international tourism market and further over the past ten years passenger traffic from China has increased on average 15.8%, each year,” Gandy said.
To meet the growing demand, Melbourne Airport is investing heavily in infrastructure updates, most significantly a third runway which is on schedule to become operational in 2022.
Xiamen Airlines’ B787-8 plying the Melbourne-Xiamen and Melbourne-Hangzhou routes are configured with 237 seats – four in first class, 18 in business and 215 in economy class. The airline now has six -8s and four -9s in its fleet. Other Xiamen Airlines long-haul destinations include Amsterdam, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Sydney and Vancouver. The carrier is 51%-owned by China Southern Airlines.
