Tibet Airlines Airbus A330-200
Taken by @ndi.salo on Instagram
Tibet Airlines has recently launched 18 new routes to the Tibet Autonomous Region for the summer season. It’s hope is to provide more options for tourists when visiting the Himalayas. These new destinations will provide flights from Tibet’s capital Lhasa to Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, Jiuzhaigou, Xiamen, and Xining. It is very unusual to see that the airline is opening up more routes during this crisis when many others are axing existing routes.
China and the Coronavirus
Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, Wuhan was forced to shut down their airport. This followed to many other areas in the country. However, this means that this year’s summer schedule is now from the 3rd of May to the 24th of October. They will carry out a total of 66 routes during this period.
The amount of tourists has substantially dropped in areas of China, especially the Himalayan region according to Wang Songping, the director of regional tourism. Although, with the country returning back to normal, tourism is beginning to rise again as many people return to Tibet.
Tibet Airlines hopes that these new routes to their rural regions will help increase local income in the areas. Even though many of China’s indoor facilities remain closed, the outdoor attractions are still available. As the country is almost back to normal, tourism will take another while to return back to its previous state. These new flights launched by the airline are in hope to attract Chinese visitors with more options when it comes to air travel.
Before the coronavirus crisis, the Tibet region was thriving. Tibet had 40 million tourists from China and abroad visiting the region in 2019. This was an increase of 19% on the previous year and also gained billions in extra revenue.
Tibet Airlines will launch all its new flights from their Lhasa Gonggar Airport (LXA/ZULS). This is one of the highest airports in the world! It is 13,800 ft above sea level which is the equivalent of 4200 metres.
Information on the airline
The airline was established in 2010. Tibet Airlines’ headquarters at Lhasa Gonggar Airport. They are mostly well-known for their regularly scheduled flights to most provinces in China along with direct non-stop flights to both Beijing and Shanghai. However, they are now one of the only airlines in the world right now increasing their scheduled flights for the future.
The airline is made up of a 32 aircraft fleet that has an average age of 4.3 years. They have 21 Airbus A319-100s, 6 Airbus A220-200s and 5 Airbus A330-200s.
They also own fourty nine percent of Himalaya Airlines. They are a Nepalese company based at Tribhuvan International Airport (KTM/VNKT) in Kathmandu. They were founded as a joint venture between the Yeti World Investment Group and Tibet Airlines in 2014. Himalayan Airlines began operations with a single Airbus A320 in May of 2016. Today the airline operates a fleet of four Airbus aircraft. This consists of three Airbus A320s and one Airbus A319-100. The A320s are registered 9N-ALM, 9N-ALV and 9N-ALW. The A319 is registered 9N-AJK which was only received on the 2nd of March 2020.
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