Australia, China pen open skies deal
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Air links between Australia and China are likely to take off in the coming years, following the signing of a bilateral open skies agreement.
The Australian and Chinese governments have agreed to remove all capacity restrictions on flights between Australia and China for the airlines of both countries. This is expected to lead to an influx of new flights between the two countries, including new routes from China’s emerging second tier cities.
“We have also liberalised traffic rights and code share arrangements, which are important for Australian airlines. This will enable Australian and Chinese airlines to service destinations between and beyond both countries, and will allow them to take full advantage of their cooperative arrangements with their commercial alliance partners,” revealed Australia’s Minister for Infrastructure & Transport, Darren Chester.
The two countries have already seen a sharp rise in connectivity in recent months and years, and this will continue with the launch of China Southern Airlines’ Guangzhou-Adelaide route in December, Qantas’ Sydney-Beijing services and China Eastern’s Wuhan-Sydney route, which are due to start in January.
China is seen as the cornerstone of Australia’s tourism development strategy. More than one million Chinese tourists visited Australia in the 2015-16 financial year, spending almost AU$9 billion (US$$6.7bn). 2017 has been designated as the “Australia-China Year of Tourism”.
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