The resumption of international air travel to and from Nanjing continues, as a return flight from Vancouver touched down this afternoon at Nanjing Lukou, bringing the number of post-pandemic flights abroad now to four, on three different continents.
China Eastern Airlines’ flight MU215 departed Nanjing Lukou International Airport yesterday a little over an hour late, at 2.14 pm, as the first North American route operated from Lukou since the epidemic shut down international travel earlier this year.
Tickets for the first flight went on sale on 31 July and all seats were sold out within 2 hours, reports the Yangtze Evening News.
The return flight, scheduled for 11 am, also departed a little more than an hour late, but landed in Nanjing only 2 minutes behind schedule, at 2.37 pm today.
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The two flights were operated by a large capacity, wide-bodied, Airbus A330, registration B-5930, pictured here arriving at Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport that was last year one of the world’s 25 busiest airports.
On the newly-restored route from Nanjing, flight MU215 departs on Tuesdays, and enjoys a quick turnaround in Vancouver, enabling the return leg, as flight MU216, to arrive back in Nanjing on Wednesday afternoons, thanks to the 15-hour time difference between the two cities.
The flight is the fourth international flight to resume at Nanjing Lukou, following the services to Milan, on NEOS; Frankfurt on Lufthansa; and Seoul on Asiana Airlines.
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Each operate a once-weekly service, as a result of newly-instated international travel regulations laid down by the Civil Aviation Administration of China and the National Health Commission.
Under the post-pandemic regs, airlines are to discontinue their flights on any route for 1 week if five passengers are found to be Covid positive. In the case of more than 10 passengers testing positive, the airline’s flights to that destination are suspended for a 4-week period.
However, it works the other way too. Airlines may increase their flight frequency to two weekly flights if no passengers are found tested positive for 3 consecutive weeks.
None of the four international services now operating to and from Nanjing Lukou have to date been either “punished” or “rewarded” according the new rules.
