Korean Air expands China services

Korean Air has announced it will start to operate a new regular service between Incheon (Seoul) and Guangzhou, China's southern economic hub.

Guangzhou, one of China's three major cities along with Beijing and Shanghai, is Korean Air's first for scheduled flight destination in the southern part China, the fastest growing economy in the world.

"We will continue to increase our routes to China, in order to offer our customers more travel options between China and Korea and to provide faster and more efficient access to North America, Europe, Oceania, and Japan via our Incheon hub," said J.H. Lee, President and COO of Korean Air.

"We are consistently looking for new destinations to expand our network. During the past two months alone, we have launched new flights to Yantai, Dalian, Vienna, Las Vegas and now Guangzhou," Lee added.

Korean Air's inauguration to Guagzhou is following an agreement made between the Korean and Chinese governments in June, to greatly increase the number of flights between the two countries.

Since the agreement was made, Korean Air has been aggressively launching new services to China. In August, Korean Air received authorization from its transportation authorities to change its twice-weekly public charter operation to Weihai to regular scheduled operations and expanded the frequency to daily operation. Also in August, daily public charter services to Yantai and Dalian were inaugurated. These routes, along with the Shenzhen, Yanji and Changsha public charter flights, have also recently obtained the status of regular scheduled operation, and will start regular operations in October. In addition, Korean Air plans to increase its capacity to Beijing and Shanghai, aiming to operate twice-daily flights on each route.

By adding Guangzhou to its route map, Korean Air now serves 20 destinations in China and 97 destinations worldwide.