China Southern Airlines, one of the country's largest airways,
will launch regular flights between the central city of Changsha
and Seoul starting October, a company executive said Wednesday.
The new service will offer five return flights a week on
Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays between
Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province and Seoul of
South Korea, said Xu Xiaolin, director of the market office of the
Hunan branch of China Southern.
China Southern plans to use Airbus 320 plane for the fights,
with the flight number CZ3065/6.
The flights will depart from Changsha at 11 AM (Beijing time)
and arrive in Seoul at 2:35 PM (Seoul time). The return flights
will depart from Seoul at 3:35 PM and arrive in Changsha at 5:35
PM., Xu said.
Prior to the new regular flights, Xu said, only chartered
flights were available between Changsha and Seoul. They were
operated by two Chinese airlines, the China Southern Airlines and
the China Eastern Airlines, and two South Korean airways -- Korean
Air and Asiana Airlines.
Under the chartered flight system, the airways worked with
travel agencies and the air tickets could only be sold by
contractors in South Korea, Xu said.
"The chartered flight service is for tourist groups, but not
suitable for individual business people," she said. "The new
service will be more convenient for people in Hunan and South
Korea."
Hunan has seen a surge of South Korean tourists to Zhangjiajie,
a well-known scenic spot in the province, in recent years. The
number of South Korean tourists to Zhangjiajie city grew from
100,000 in 2002 to nearly 500,000 last year, statistics with the
Hunan provincial tourism administration show.
The first chartered flights between Seoul and Changsha were
launched in November 2005.
Currently, there are no direct flights between Seoul and
Zhangjiajie as the latter does not have international airport
status, Xu said.
But China Southern will add return flights from Changsha to
Zhangjiajie to enable passengers to travel around the three cities
on the same plane, she said.
(Xinhua News Agency September 14, 2006)
