Direct connections between India and China were suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic and never resumed — until now. The announcement comes amid a thawing in relations between New Delhi and Beijing.
Direct flights between the world’s two most populous countries, India and China, are set to resume at the end of October for the first time in five years.
India’s leading airline IndiGo announced on Friday that it would be offering daily non-stop connections between Calcutta and Guangzhou from October 26.
A second route from the Indian capital. New Delhi, to an as yet unconfirmed Chinese city is also planned.
“It has now been agreed that direct air services connecting designated points in India and China can resume by late October,” read an Indian government statement released on Thursday.
“This agreement of the civil aviation authorities will further facilitate people-to-people contact between India and China, contributing towards the gradual normalization of bilateral exchanges.”
The announcement comes on the back of the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Shanghai at the end of August, his first trip to China in seven years.
Modi declared at the time, alongside Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, that India and China were development partners, not rivals.
Indeed, opening bookings for its China flights on Friday, airline IndiGo said the move would reestablish avenues for cross-border trade and strategic business partnerships and promote tourism between the two nations.”
Relations between China and India collapsed in 2020 after troops from both sides clashed along a disputed border in the Himalayan mountains. Four Chinese soldiers and 20 Indian troops were killed in the worst violence between the two countries in decades.
Direct flights were suspended anyway due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and were never resumed —until now, with observers attributing the thaw in relations to tariff threats made against both countries by US President Donald Trump.
In June, Beijing already granted permission to Indian pilgrims trekking to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a holy site for Hindus and Buddhists, for the first time since the 2020 border clashes.
Edited by Sean Sinico
DW News
